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SELF-CULTURE 



PHYSICAL, INTELLECTUAL, MORAL 
AND SPIRITUAL 



% Course of Hectare* 



JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE 



" Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment uncertain and judgment 
difficult." — First Words of the Aphorisms of Hippocrates. 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

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COPYRIGHT l88o BY JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY 
COPYRIGHT 1908 BY ELIOT C. CLARKE 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



CONTENTS. 



PAGB 

Introductory Chapter : Beginnings of Culture, in 
Childhood. — Natural and Artificial Methods 

in the Education of Children 3 

lecture 

I. Man's Duty to Grow , 31 

II. Training and Care of the Body 53 

III. The Use of Time 71 

IV. Self-Knowledge 93 

V. Education of the Powers of Observation . 113 

VI. Education of the Reflective Powers . . 131 

VII. The Intuitional Nature 155 

VIII. The Imagination 175 

IX. Education of the Conscience 195 

X. Education of the Affections and Social 

Powers 221 

XI. The Organ of Reverence, and its Cultiva- 
tion 245 

XII. Education by Means of Money 263 

XIII. Education of the Temper 285 

XIV. Culture by Reading and Books 807 

XV. The Education of Courage 327 

XVI. On Finishing Everything ; or, The Two 

Extra Pennies 345 

XVII. Education of the Will ........ 363 

XVIII. Education by Means of Amusement .... 381 

XIX. Education of Hope 399 

XX. Every Man his Proper Gift 415 

XXI. Let us do what we can 433 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 



SELF-CULTURE. 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

The Beginnings of Culture, in Childhood. — Natural anb 
Artificial Methods in the Education of Children. 

EDUCATION is made up of three grand divis- 
ions. First, Instruction, or knowledge com- 
municated to the intellect; second, Training, or 
exercise of the faculties ; third, Development, or 
education in its special meaning, — the unfolding of 
the whole nature of man. These three constitute 
Education in its largest sense. 

Of all this Education, the school and college con- 
tributes a part, but a much larger part comes from 
other sources. Nature educates, life educates, society 
educates. Outward circumstances, inward experi- 
ences, and social influences, make up a large part of 
human culture. But at present, let us see what 
schools ought to do, what they actually do, and what 
they might do. 

A boy begins to go to school, say at seven years 
of age; and he leaves college, say at twenty-one 
years. He has then spent fourteen years in study ; 



4 SELF-CULTURE. 

and the object of nearly all his study has been to 
store his mind with knowledge. What, then, does 
he know ? 

After fourteen years' study he ought to know a 
good deal. First, to speak, read, and write his own 
language well, and to be acquainted with its princi- 
pal authors. Secondly, as so much time is given to 
Latin and Greek, he ought to be able to read easily 
a Latin or Greek work, at sight. Next, he should 
know the main facts of Geography and Universal 
History, and the chief dates of political events, — 
also such facts in the history of Greece, Eome, 
France, Italy, England, Spain, Germany, and the 
United States. He should read easily two or three 
modern languages. Then, in science, he should know 
the present condition of Geology, Chemistry, Nat- 
ural Philosophy, Astronomy, Botany. He should 
understand the condition and progress of the useful 
arts and the fine arts, and some elements of The- 
ology, Medicine, and Law. He ought to know 
something of Social Science, including Politics and 
Political Economy. Finally, he ought to know 
something about his own body and soul, his fac- 
ulties and powers, the laws of thought and of 
physical culture. In fourteen years ought there 
not to be learned at least as much as this ? 

Now, what is the fact in the majority of cases ? 
Usually that when he leaves college, he knows 
enough Latin to translate Virgil and Cicero with- 
out a dictionary; enough Greek to translate the 



INTROD UCTOR Y. 5 

Iliad with one. He has a smattering of French 
and possibly of one or two modern languages. He 
is pretty well acquainted with Algebra and Geom- 
etry, — and he has nearly forgotten what he learned 
in school of Geography and History. 

Does not this show that our methods of education, 
as yet, have not reached the point at which they 
aim ? They do not constitute an art. For what is 
an art ? An art is a method, based on science, of 
doing anything thoroughly and effectually. If the 
thing to be done is a useful thing, it is a useful art ; 
if a beautiful thing, it is a fine art. For example, 
the making of a shoe is an art. It does not come by 
nature or inspiration ; it has to be taught ; but any 
one can learn to do it, so that with moderate capa- 
city and attention, he is sure to be able to make a 
real shoe, when he has learned the art. Now 
education will become an art when a person of 
average capacity shall be able to teach all scholars 
of average capacity, so that at the end of their 
course they shall really know the thing taught in 
that course. At present, such is not the case. If 
the teacher is a man of genius, an enthusiast capa- 
ble of inspiring enthusiasm ; and if the scholar has 
the power of being quickened into a like enthusi- 
asm, then the scholar really learns, but not other- 
wise. Agassiz could inspire such an interest in 
Gasteropods and Echinoderms that a large part of his 
class should graduate with an intimate personal 
knowledge of those little people. That is the result 



6 SELF-CULTURE. 

of genius, however, not of art. What we need is 
to have the art of education so perfected, that a 
teacher of average intelligence shall be able to in- 
spire a similar ardor in each study. How can this 
be done ? I answer, by following the method of 
nature in teaching. 

How does Mother Nature teach ? She takes on 
herself the most difficult part of all the course, and 
she does her work thoroughly. Hers is the real 
Primary School. She says, " I will take the little 
child who knows nothing, and I will teach him to 
know the use of his own body, the nature of the 
world about him, and the articulate language of 
his country." And she does it. The little thing 
learns to see, hear, touch, taste, walk ; to jump, run, 
climb, hold objects, know what is hard and soft, 
heavy and light, round and square ; to know wood, 
stone, earth, water, air; to distinguish between 
things near and distant, sounds remote and close by. 
Finally, she teaches him to speak a language; he 
having no other language to learn it by. When I 
learn Latin, I do it by finding the equivalent in Latin 
of some English word which I already know. But 
the little child learning his own language has no 
words to learn by. It is one of the most marvellous 
things ; if it were not so common we should see it ; 
a little child learning to speak. The difficulties he 
surmounts are far greater than we should encounter 
in learning Chinese or Sanskrit. And, observe, he 
does not acquire a smattering of language, but he 



INTROD UCTOR Y. 7 

learns it thoroughly, so as to be able to use it for all 
practical purposes. 

Now, how does the dear mother do all this ? 
What is her method ? 

Fikst, — She mixes nine parts of pleasure and 
one of pain, nine of hope and one of fear, in her 
system. We do just about the opposite, in ours. 
We imagine the child is not studying if it is having 
a good time. In Nature's school it is only studying 
when it is happy, it only works when it is at play. 
See the little child at play, or perhaps at what its 
mother calls mischief, — it is trying to make its shoe 
swim in a basin of water. Stop, mamma ! don't 
scold, it is learning a lesson in Hydrostatics. What ! 
it has broken the window with its ball, and stands 
absorbed at that mystery of broken glass ? Well, 
it was becoming acquainted with the nature of an 
elastic body, and by accident has learned what is 
cohesive and what frangible. It is digging in the 
mud ; it is paddling in the water ; it is shovelling 
sand. You call it play, but you never worked half 
as hard in what you call your study ; that is, you 
never put your faculties into anything with such 
intensity and concentration as that child is now 
doing. 

He is learning thoroughly the qualities and rela- 
tions of things ; he is learning to know surface and 
substance, to distinguish between aeriform, fluid, 
and solid ; to know what is ductile, what malleable, 
what flexible ; he is becoming acquainted with lat- 



8 SELF-CULTURE. 

eral strength, cohesive force, specific gravity ; he is 
studying statics and dynamics ; the law of acceler- 
ating forces ; the power of the lever, the inclined 
plane, the wheel and axle ; he is learning equi- 
librium, rotation, angular motion, and the like. To 
be sure, he does not learn all these fine words ; but 
he learns the things meant by them. He learns the 
things with delight in Nature's school ; by and by, 
in ours, he shall learn their names with disgust and 
difficulty.' 

Nature gives delight in the use of all our facul- 
ties ; she makes also an additional pleasure to attend 
every accomplishment. When the child has learned 
to break a stick, he will sit still an hour breaking 
stick after stick. By this ingenious contrivance 
she teaches him language. She also begins with the 
easiest word, and the word nearest at hand, and in 
this tremendous task of teaching him his first word, 

1 Let two little boys weigh each other on a platform scale. 
Then when they balance each other on their board see-saw, let 
them see (and measure for themselves) that the lighter one is 
farther from the fence-rail on which their board is placed, in the 
same proportion as the heavier boy outweighs the lighter one. 
They will then have learned the grand principle of the lever. 
Then let them measure and see that the light one see-saws farther 
than the heavy one, in the same proportion ; and they will have 
acquired the principle of virtual velocities. Explain to them that 
equality of moments means nothing more than that when they seat 
themselves at their measured distances on their see-saw, they balance 
each other. Let them see that the weight of the heavy boy, when 
multiplied by his distance in feet from the fence-rail, amounts to 
just as much as the weight of the light one when multiplied by 



INTRO D UC TOR Y. 9 

she brings another powerful agency to bear, — 
namely, love. When the infant learns to say his 
first word, and can actually articulate, " Papa, Mam- 
ma" there is very good reason why all the neigh- 
bors shall be called in (as they usually are) to hear 
him say it. For if he shall live to be a Webster or 
a Chatham, and speak with the tongue of men and 
angels, he will never surmount a greater obstacle, 
or take a longer step, or acquire a more wonderful 
accomplishment. Nature brings three great forces to 
bear on him in order to teach him to say " Mamma," 
— the pleasure of exercising a faculty ; the pleasure 
of accomplishment, that is, of repeating over and over 
what we have learned to do once ; and, lastly, the 
exquisite delight of the mother, overflowing with 
ecstatic love for her darling child, by which she 
magnetizes his little heart, and attracts him to do 
what gives him and her such joy. Her eyes shower 



his distance. Explain to them that each of the amounts is in 
foot-pounds. Tell them that the lightest one, because he see-saws 
so much faster than the other, will bump against the ground just 
as hard as the heavy one ; and that this means that their momen- 
tums are equal. The boys may then go in to dinner, and probably 
puzzle their big lout of a brother who has just passed through 
college with high honors. They will not forget what they have 
learned ; for they learned it as play, without any ear-pulling, 
spanking, or keeping in. Let their bats and balls, their marbles, 
their swings, &c. , once become their philosophical apparatus, and 
children may be taught (really taught) many of the most impor- 
tant principles of engineering before they can read or write. — 
From Trantwine's "Civil Engineers' Pocket- Book," — a book 
which has been called the best practical manual for engineers. 



10 SELF-CULTURE. 

affection into his, while she covers him with kisses. 
Dame Nature looks on, and says, " All right, — it 
will go now." 

The child's eyes plainly say "I have done a big 
thing." And he has. After " Mamma " and " Pa- 
pa" come other nouns of one syllable, — for "Papa" 
and " Mamma " are monosyllables repeated, — usu- 
ally proper nouns. The people around the infant 
are the first objects of his interest, because they are 
actively interested in him. I have lately been 
watching a child learning to talk, and I observed 
that it gave monosyllabic names to each of the five 
or six persons around it. One was named " Bah," 
another " Gah," a third " Nee," a fourth " Ko," a 
fifth "Nee-nee." A cracker for eating was "Ka," 
and so on. Here we see the beginnings of lan- 
guage, and discover that the Chinese language is 
probably a primitive tongue whose development was 
arrested while in the monosyllabic stage. 

After the proper nouns come sounds which re- 
semble " milk," and " water," and " sugar," and other 
substantives, mostly relating to matters of diet, with 
which the child has made himself acquainted. 
Sentences follow. "I want" this. "Give me" 
that ; only, as nouns take the lead of pronouns in 
this method, — it is usually "Johnny wants" this, 
" Give Johnny " that. Desire being the lever mostly 
used by Nature, the verbs significant of desire will 
arrive on the stage very early. Observe, too, the 
power of repetition in this system. The words first 



INTRODUCTORY. 11 

learned are never forgotten, for they are the words 
which are always in use, and so have to be repeated 
every day. Also notice that Nature in teaching 
grammar gives the rule first, and says nothing at 
all about exceptions till some time after. In our 
schools, we cram the grammars with every possible 
exception, qualification, collateral remark, and limi- 
tation, as though we were educating a Scaliger, and 
not a little Irish boy. Nature lets the infant form 
all his verbs regularly at first. He says, " I drinked 
the water." " I feeded the dog." " I runned out of 
doors." By and by, seeing that other people say 
" drank," he says " drank." So Nature teaches us 
grammar, — and most of the grammar we know we 
learn in this way. 

Observe also that Nature trains while she teaches, 
she disciplines the powers while she imparts infor- 
mation to the intellect. We are too analytic ; we 
teach only the memory, — she teaches all the pri- 
mary faculties at the same time. Her synthetic 
method has great advantages over our analytic one. 
It is more vital, lively, interesting. While the 
child is learning the properties of bodies, he is at 
the same time training his own faculties. He is 
learning to measure ; to weigh ; and to distinguish 
forms, colors, and sizes. Moreover, he comes ever- 
more into contact with a living and real world of 
substance, — not a dead world of words. Happy 
child ! the roof of whose schoolroom is the blue 
heaven with its drifting clouds, and mellow tints of 



12 SELF-CULTURE. 

sunrise, and glories of evening, — whose bench is 
the soft grass, the gray stone, the limb of the apple- 
tree, — whose books are all illustrated with moving, 
living forms, — waving trees, dewy leaves, wild- 
flowers, all varieties of birds, and insects, and 
fishes, and animals, — how fast he learns, — finding 
"tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
sermons in stones, and good in everything." 

" Well," but you may say, " what are we going to 
do about it ? Shall we shut up our schools, and 
send the children out into the fields to run about at 
random ? " No ! but patiently and reverently study 
the methods of Nature, and copy her principles in- 
stead of going in direct opposition to them. Do not 
drive the children by force, or fear ; lead them by 
the attraction of joy. Let Mother Nature come into 
your school and be your assistant, — she is not too 
proud to be so. She will help you if you will let 
her. 

" Ah ! " but you say, " children must learn appli- 
cation, must learn to work, — they cannot always 
find study pleasant ; it must be unpleasant often, 
and so it is a discipline." 

This is the old mistake of thinking that hard 
work must necessarily be unpleasant work. Do 
children ever work as hard at school as they do at 
play? 

Is there ever more mental application displayed 
in any study than there is in a game of chess ? Is 
there more physical energy put forth in any kind of 



INTRO D UC TOR Y. 13 

hard day-labor than there is in a game of football, 
or in a boat-race ? 

I do not propose that boys and girls should spend 
their time in play. But I propose to use the prin- 
ciple involved in play in acquiring knowledge. 
What are the objections usually made to games of 
chance, as cards, for example ; or such games of 
skill as billiards ? They are two : first, that there 
is no profitable result of the time and effort ; and, 
second, that there is no useful discipline of any 
faculty. Let us suppose something as interesting, 
which disciplines the faculties, and also leaves the 
mind possessed of some valuable knowledge, and 
would you object to it because it was interesting 
and not dull ? I should say you were rather dull 
yourself if you did. Let us suppose, for example, 
there were a Chronological game of cards (as there 
might easily be) as interesting as Whist or Piquet ; 
by which the memory should be so disciplined as to 
retain easily some five hundred of the more impor- 
tant historic dates, and to have them fixed forever 
in the mind ? Or suppose a Geographical game of 
cards, by which in like manner there should be fixed 
in the memory for life the names and localities of 
the principal cities, rivers, mountains ; and their 
latitude and longitude. Would you object to it 
because it was a game, and because the children 
loved to play it, and would play it among them- 
selves for amusement ? Would you think it better 
for them to sit and loll at their desks hour after 



14 SELF-CULTURE. 

hour, vacantly staring at their books, so as to learn 
just enough of chronology and geography to pass a 
decent examination, and then forget it again ? x 

The principle I contend for is sometimes intro- 
duced into schools, but only occasionally, and as 
though it ought not to be often permitted. The 
whole school divides into two opposing sides, and 
plays a game of spelling, perhaps, — to see which 
side shall beat. The children become excited and 
interested, and fix their whole attention on each 
word, and learn more, I venture to say, of spelling, 
in that fifteen minutes' game, than in many long 
hours of half-stupefied inattention to their spelling- 
book. In like manner I have seen Colburn's First 
Lessons in Arithmetic made a play, in which the 
children who answered right all went up, and those 
who answered wrong all went down, — and so, in 
an hour's recitation, a boy might get from the foot 
to the head and back again once or twice. What 
animation, what interest, there was in this exercise ! 
If study means the full tension of the intellect, 
applied to some mental problem and concentrated 
upon it with the whole force of the will, then I say, 
I never saw harder study than that. But it was all 
wrong, I suppose, because it was interesting ; be- 
cause it was like a play. In short, it was a natural 
mode of study, and so not to be tolerated. Besides, 

1 The principle of arranging methods of study on the plan of 
games was fully developed by Locke, in his Essay on Education, 
and excited at the time much interest and discussion. 



INTRODUCTORY. 15 

the dreadful principle of emulation was encouraged 
by it. 

I am free to confess myself such a heretic to 
modern notions, as to believe fully in emulation as 
applied in teaching. We do apply it, we can't help 
applying it, — the question only is hoiv? The 
difference in my opinion between the use and abuse 
of this faculty is in making the prize of excellence 
merely transient, and not permanent. Let the re- 
ward of excellence be the natural reward, the mo- 
mentary sense and recognition that one has excelled. 
Do not offer prizes, which are to remain, and to feed 
vanity. Do not have marks for every exercise, to be 
added up each day, and kept from month to month, 
to determine who is to have the highest rank at the 
end of the year. Such things make children un- 
naturally and precociously attentive to their own 
interests, — make them selfish and mercenary. It 
is not a generous emulation, a desire of excellence, 
— but it is the wish for a prize, a high rank, or the 
praise of the outside visitors ; all that, I think bad. 

But let the reward of excellence be momentary, 
as when boys choose sides, and play football or base, 
and when they exert themselves for victory, as if 
the success of their life depended on it. But the 
game once over, there is an end. They will have 
forgotten, to-morrow, which side won. There are 
no ranklings left in the bosoms of those who are de- 
feated, — no undue self-satisfaction in those who 
have won. So, in my opinion, the transient excite- 



16 SELF-CULTURE. 

ment and stimulus in the old plan of going up and 
down in recitation was good, provided the results of 
each day's success or failure ended with the day. 
But I utterly abhor the system followed in some 
colleges, where everything goes to rank, — where 
recitations, behavior, presence at prayers, all are 
laid up for the final decision at the end of four 
years, and so some of the gentle youth are made 
unnaturally calculating, cautious, prudent, and are 
devoured by an envious and grasping ambition, — 
and others are equally made reckless and discour- 
aged. 

How good it is when the teacher gives lessons in 
Botany or Geology in the open air, — taking a walk 
with his class ; guiding their minds, helping them to 
look, teaching them how to observe Nature, and giv- 
ing them that vital interest which comes from con- 
tact with things themselves instead of with their 
names in books. The child who has found a beau- 
tiful orchid, or a group of harebells, or a bank by the 
roadside where the sweet Linnsea hangs its twin 
bells, never forgets them. The class which has seen 
Jupiter and his moons through the telescope, or 
which has studied out the constellations by its 
teacher's side during a summer's evening, has ac- 
quired a taste for knowledge which the dead letters 
in books can never give. There is something in 
contact with Nature herself which awakens a strange 
joy in the soul. The touch of water, the sight of a 
tree waving its multitude of branches in the sum- 



INTRO D UCTOR Y. 17 

mer air, the gray old rock covered with lichens and 
mosses, — these seem to carry knowledge into the 
mind, as books alone never can. So that I sympa- 
thize a good deal with the student in Goethe's Faust, 
who says, after thanking his instructor for his teach- 
in 0, — 

"And yet, if I the truth might say, 
I would I were again away. 
Walls like these, and halls like these, 
Will, I fear, in no wise please, — 
The narrow gloom of this low room, 
Where nothing green is ever seen, 
'Mong benches, books, my heart is sinking, 
And my faded senses shrinking. 
I mourn the hour that I came hither, 
Ear, and eye, and heart will die, — 
Thought, and the power of thought, will Avither." 

Our ancestors would sometimes get an Indian, 
and try to civilize him by sending him to college. 
He would study his Greek grammar and Latin gram- 
mar for a while, very faithfully ; but at last an irre- 
pressible yearning for the woods would come over 
him, and he would disappear, — leaving " Bonus, 
a-um" for the old wild life of the forest. Who 
could blame him, or wonder ? 

There is, however, a serious objection to all this, 
which ought to be met, and I shall state it as fairly 
and strongly as I can. 

" You propose to us," so says my opponent, "to 
make all study agreeable, to make education as in- 
teresting to children as play. You cannot do so, 

2 



18 SELF-CULTURE. 

and you ought not to do so. Part of education is 
the discipline of self-denial, — it is denial of present 
pleasure for future good, — it is doing disagreeable 
things cheerfully, — it is doing not only hard work, 
but unpleasant work. It would be a bad thing to 
make all children's work pleasant : for there are a 
great many unpleasant labors before them in the 
world for which they ought to be prepared ; and for 
which they will not be prepared if they are taught 
in youth on the principle that all study must be like 
play." That is the objection ; stated as strongly as 
I know how to state it. 

I reply, however, that if there is a great deal to 
be done by children which is unpleasant, I do not 
expect to make that agreeable. Not that which 
cannot be made interesting, but that which can, I 
try to make so. If you will admit that all the study 
which can be turned into pleasure shall be, I will 
be satisfied ; and I will leave, for your comfort, all 
which must be disagreeable. If, however, you think 
that some good discipline comes to a child by hav- 
ing that study made stupid and hateful, which 
might be made attractive and pleasant, I differ from 
you. I admit that there will be always some work 
to be done, which will be harsh, — but I think that 
will suffice. If you think that the proper prepara- 
tion for a hard, laborious life, a life spent in dis- 
agreeable toil, is a youth and childhood also spent in 
harsh disagreeable toil, I differ from you as widely 
as heaven is distant from earth. God, also, differs 



INTRODUCTORY. 19 

from you, I am inclined to think ; else why does He 
make childhood a season of pleasure, so far as we 
do not interfere to make it pain ? Why does God 
make happiness so native to a child's heart, and 
give it such joy in everything ? All young things 
are happy. They dance, they sing, they crow, they 
skip, they play. Give a child a heap of sand to dig, 
a few sticks to arrange, a piece of paper and a pair 
of scissors to cut it with, — give him a piece of 
string to make a whip with, or to play that he is 
driving a horse, when he fastens his string to the leg 
of a chair, — and he is happy. If God thinks grief 
the best preparation for grief, why did He not make 
little children unhappy to begin with ? We can, if 
we try hard, I know, make them unhappy. We 
can collect them into a close room, and make them 
sit on a hard bench, and keep perfectly still the 
limbs which Nature has filled full of electricity, that 
they might be moving all the time, — and scold them 
when they move, — and we can, by hard effort, keep 
them in rather an uncomfortable state. Bat relax 
that effort ; just say, " You may go out, children, into 
the yard ! " and the whole tide of excluded and re- 
pressed pleasure rushes back again. You need not 
give them any playthings, or take the least pains 
about their being happy, — Nature will attend to 
that. See the little things scramble downstairs ; 
hear their joyous outbursting glee, — see them run- 
ning round and round, and laughing, and being as 
merry, as if to them there were no such thing as sin 



2 SELF-CUL TURE. 

or sorrow in the world, — as indeed there is not. 
For, in my opinion, that deep sense of guilt which 
we call sin, and that permanent weight of gloom 
which we call sorrow, do not come naturally to 
childhood. Children do wrong, and repent of it, — 
they suffer sharp pangs of disappointment, and the 
like ; but these are transient, and meant to be so. 
Sin and soekow, the dark background of life, which 
tinge with permanent sadness our elder hearts, do 
not belong to childhood. 

Those who oppose this doctrine have their quar- 
rel, not with us, but with the Creator. He does not 
seem to think that the proper outfit for a life of 
pain is pain, — He has thought joy the best prepa- 
ration for it. He does not think that the best way 
to prepare for a journey into the wilderness, where 
food and water are likely to be wanting, is to empty 
our knapsacks and canteens. No ! but to fill them. 
A joyful youth is the best preparation for an earnest 
manhood. A youth of suffering and privation pre- 
pare for discouragement and depression afterward. 

It used to be thought that heat was a bad prepa- 
ration for encountering cold. How often, when a 
boy, was I ordered not to go into the water when I 
was hot ; but to wait till I was cool. But now we 
know that this is all a mistake. The hotter the body 
is, the better is it able to resist cold. The Russians 
go from a hot bath into one icy cold. The Indians 
used to take a vapor-bath sitting over some hot 
stones on which water was sprinkled, and then 



INTRODUCTORY. 21 

jumped into the cold river. Any one who doubts 
the wisdom of this may easily satisfy himself by 
going directly from a very hot bath into a very cold 
one. He will find that he scarcely feels the cold at 
all. In the same way people coming from the 
Southern States to New England do not feel the 
first or second winter as much as we do. In 
the Eussian Campaign the Eussian soldiers suffered 
more than the French from cold. The best prepa- 
ration therefore for encountering cold is to be hot. 
The best preparation to meet famine is to be well 
fed. And the best preparation for a life of hard 
work, of trial, and difficulty, is to have a happy 
childhood and youth to look back to. It keeps up 
our faith in the goodness of God, it prevents us 
from being too much discouraged. "We know that 
there is some real happiness in life ; for we have ex- 
perienced it ourselves. The memory of a sunny, 
free, happy childhood goes with us all our way, — 
the memory of the good old grandparents who used 
to pet us and spoil us, — the memory of the ardent 
friendships of childhood ; of the beauty and bounty 
of nature ; the innocent pleasure furnished by 
earth and water ; by bird, and insect, and flower, 
and fruit, — all these leave their fragrance with us 
during life, and keep up our faith that love and hap- 
piness are the rule, sorrow and selfishness the excep- 
tion. 

The discipline of self-denial is good, both for old 
and young. All must learn self-denial, — it is one 



22 SELF-CULTURE. 

of the first and last lessons of life. But no one 
practises self-denial without a motive. The three 
principal motives for self-denial are the fear of pain, 
the hope of pleasure, and the sense of duty. In 
the discipline of Nature, Pain is a sentinel standing 
on the outside of the camp to define certain limits, 
which must not be passed over. But there is a vast 
deal more of self-denial daily practised from hope 
than there is from fear. The great majority of man- 
kind deny the love of ease and of pleasure ; they 
labor and abstain, in order to acquire wealth, fame, 
power, or knowledge. Hardly anywhere, except in 
some very poor schools, and with slaves, is fear the 
chief motive for self-denial. 

No doubt children and men must also learn 
and practise self-denial from a sense of duty. We 
must do many things not very interesting in them- 
selves, because we ought to do them ; — abstain from 
other practices, which are pleasant, because we ought 
not to do them. The duty may not always be agree- 
able. But to do it, is agreeable. And when the 
duty itself can be made agreeable, is it not desira- 
ble to do so ? Is it not well to have pleasant as- 
sociations connected with our duties rather than 
unpleasant ones ? When we have once taught our- 
selves and others that a duty is always to be done, 
whether agreeable or otherwise, then it is best to 
surround our tasks with as much which is cheerful 
as possible. 

This doctrine Wordsworth teaches in that marvel- 



INTR OD UC TOR Y. 23 

lous ode, the most sublime poem since Milton, in 
which he declares that faith in immortality comes 
in part from the joy which God gives to childhood. 
In it he thanks God 

"for those first affections, 
Those shadowy recollections, 
Which, be they what they may, 
Are yet the fountain light of all our day. 
And yet a master light of all our seeing, 
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
Of the eternal silence ; truths that wake 
To perish never." 

It is not then necessary to abridge at all the joys 
of childhood. Let us make our children as happy 
as we can. They will always have enough occasion 
for discipline and self-denial, — do not doubt it. I 
have known schools of two kinds. One, in which 
force and will reigned supreme ; in which scolding 
and threateniog, harsh words and blows, were the 
normal incidents. I have known other schools, in 
which love and reason were Queen and King ; in 
which a healthy and happy atmosphere was breathed 
by all the little ones ; and a sense of peace, of order, 
of good-will, was taught to each child. Which of the 
schools did the most good ? Which was the best 
preparation for time and eternity ? 

Discipline is good, but discipline does not mean 
suffering or pain. I have seen schools in which 
there was much whipping, but very little discipline, 



24 SELF-CUL TURE. 

— while in others there was no whipping at all, but 
much discipline. Whipping is not discipline, — force 
is not discipline. I venture to say that, out of the 
army, there is no such strict discipline maintained 
anywhere else as is kept up in the games of children, 

— as in football, base, cricket, &c. A little fellow 
whose business is to " catch out " had much rather 
miss his Latin exercise in school under the sternest 
master, than miss being in his place to catch the 
ball. Play does not exclude discipline, but usually 
includes it. What admirable organization in a game 
of base ! How perfectly every boy keeps to his 
place and his work ! How wide-awake to the mat- 
ter in hand ! There is no indolence or inattention 
here, I think. 

Nor does play exclude drudgery. When you go 
home to-day, you will perhaps find your boy, hard 
at work, whittling a stick into shape for a fishing- 
pole. He has been at it for an hour or two, and 
hard work it has been; but he has persevered 
bravely so that he may be ready to go fishing to- 
morrow. How hard children work at their play, or 
in getting ready to play. So you see that if we 
make study partake of the interest of play, by any 
ingenious arrangements, we shall not exclude hard 
work, nor drudgery, nor discipline, nor self-denial. 
As to self-denial, observe the young men of a boat- 
crew at Yale, or Harvard, in training for a match. 
They are studiously temperate or abstinent ; thej' - 
flee all college excesses ; they renounce coffee, to- 



INTROD UC TOR Y. 25 

bacco, wine, spirits, cake, and pastry ; they go early 
to bed at regular hours ; and, in short, lead the lives 
of anchorites. All of their own accord, for an end, 
— to win a temporal crown. Make study as inter- 
esting, make knowledge as attractive, and you will 
obtain the like results. 

If, now, we pass from Instruction to Training, it 
is surprising how few of the faculties have hitherto 
received any discipline. Verbal memory has been 
cultivated ; the power of calculation also ; and I 
have seen exercises in Grammar Schools in addition, 
subtraction, &c, where a whole class would give the 
answer to a difficult question as soon as the teacher 
had asked it. But the perceptive organs, the powers 
which observe size, length, and breadth, those which 
observe weight, color, quantities, &c, have been 
much neglected. Object-Lessons will correct this to 
a great extent. It is difficult to say how far the 
quickness and accuracy of these faculties may be 
carried. The workers in Florentine mosaic can dis- 
tinguish ek'ht thousand varieties of red in their 
work. I have seen ladies who could correct by their 
eye a mistake made 'by a salesman in measuring- 
cloth. He would measure it, and say, " It is just a 
yard." The lady would say, "Please measure it 
ao-ain, — I think it wants half an inch," — and he 
would find it so. 1 

1 See, below, the Lecture on the Culture of the Perceptive 
Organs. 



26 SELF-CULTURE. 

The highest object of Education is development ; 
drawing out and unfolding the whole nature, phys- 
ical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual. All things 
else come easily when the soul of man is well de- 
veloped. An intelligent mind will learn everything 
easily, judge everything correctly. Develop the in- 
telligence, arouse and quicken the understanding, 
Teacher ! and you have done the main work. In 
like manner, awaken the moral nature, by the love of 
what is noble, generous, great, pure ; and moral con- 
duct follows easily. We usually think it a hard 
thing to die, — requiring the preparation of a life. 
But how easily our young soldiers died in the Civil 
War, — how peacefully, tranquilly, submissively. It 
is because they usually went to the war with a gen- 
erous and conscientious motive. They went as a 
duty, giving themselves to their country. The great 
crisis and peril of the nation aroused everything 
noble in their hearts ; and they experienced a devel- 
opment of courage and self-devotion far above what 
would come in common times. Thus they learned 
fast, in those great hours, the true lesson of life. 
They learned that true life is hot in length of days, 
but in quality of being ; and that we may easily live 
long in a few years. They learned that our highest 
joy does not come from luxury, ease, success in this 
world, but from generous renunciation, self-for- 
getting devotion ; surrender of all we have and are 
to the cause of virtue, liberty, j&stice, and humanity. 

Education will at last become a high art, based on 



INTRODUCTORY. 27 

a true science of Human Nature. Then the true 
teacher will be found to be one of the noblest bene- 
factors of his race, — the best follower perhaps of 
Him who asked that the little children might come 
to Him. So shall instruction in all valuable knowl- 
edge grow more complete and thorough ; and the 
boy or girl who has received a liberal education may 
be really presumed to know something of each im- 
portant branch of human science. So shall Train- 
ing of all the faculties accompany INSTBUCTION, 
and the end of all be the full Development of the 
man. 

In the Lectures which follow, I have called atten- 
tion to the need and the practicability of unfolding 
to a much higher degree than has usually been 
thought possible, the primal faculties of man. I 
might have called these papers Lectures on Chris- 
tian Culture, for I have shown how naturally the 
Christianity of the Gospels allies itself with the full 
development of human nature. I hope that the 
frequent references to the spirit of Christ's teaching 
will not be thought out of place. This spirit seems 
to me both a strong incentive and a practical guide 
in education. While there is no dogma of any kind 
in the book, I do not think it will be less valua- 
ble for its purpose, for occasional references of this 
kind. 



I. 



MAN'S DUTY TO GROW. 



I. 

MAN'S DUTY TO GROW. 



GOD has placed us here to grow, just as he 
placed the trees and flowers. The trees and 
the flowers grow unconsciously, and by no effort of 
their own. Man, too, grows unconsciously, and is 
educated by circumstances. But he can also control 
those circumstances, and direct the course of his life. 
He can educate himself; he can, by effort and 
thought, acquire knowledge, become accomplished, 
refine and purify his nature, develop his powers, 
strengthen his character. And because he can do 
this, he ought to do it. 

It is curious that Christian teachers should have 
so often neglected to inculcate this duty of self-cul- 
ture, seeing that it is so plainly taught by Jesus in the 
Gospels. This is the doctrine of the parable of the 
talents and of the pounds. Both teach that it is 
not enough to render back to our Master what we 
have received, unimpaired and uninjured ; but that 
we must bring back more than we receive, — that is, 
that we must add something, by our own industry 



32 SELF-CULTURE. 

and fidelity, to what God intrusts to us ; that we are 
his stewards. The parable of the talents teaches 
the law of responsibility ; that of the pounds, the 
law of retribution. The first shows that the more 
we receive, the more we are bound to do ; those who 
have two talents must bring two more ; those who 
have five, five more. The other shows that the more 
we gain, the more we shall receive ; that progress is 
not according to arithmetical but geometrical pro- 
gression • that it is a constantly accelerated progress. 

Ten men have each a single pound. One gains 
two pounds, and receives two cities ; one five, and 
receives five cities. Not merely two pounds, but two 
cities ; the powers developed in a lower service are 
employed in a higher one. The man who is faithful 
in a few things here will be made ruler over many 
things there. Here, perhaps, his business was to 
make horseshoes ; but he made them faithfully ; 
he learned how to make better horseshoes, and 
more of them, as he went on. Consequently he 
may be found fitted, in another sphere, not to make 
horseshoes, but to help govern- a planet. But, in 
both parables, the servant who brought back only 
what was given him, without improving it, is 
called a wicked and slothful servant, and loses what 
he first received. Improve your talents, or lose 
them, that is the austere law. 

And this legislative enactment of the Divine 
Lawgiver, in the New Testament, has been confirmed 
by all the decisions of the Supreme Court of the 



MAN'S DUTY TO GROW. 33 

Deity in Nature. Use and improve, or lose. This is 
the sentence pronounced on each of us by all the 
courts of God, in the physical, intellectual, and 
moral world. Use and improve your muscles and 
your percejjtions, or they will gradually but certainly 
fail. Use and improve your memory, your under- 
standing, your judgment, or they will become feeble. 
Use and improve your conscience, or it grows tor- 
pid. Use and improve the powers which look up to 
an infinite truth, beauty, and goodness, and they lift 
you towards these. Let them sleep, and they cannot 
see this kingdom of God, this Divine element in the 
universe. The fool, who has not developed his spir- 
itual nature, says in his heart, " There is no God." 
Nature reaches its hand to Eevelation to maintain 
this law, and both, with concurrent voice, cry, " Use 
and improve, or lose." 

If man has the power of self-improvement, then 
this power is itself a talent confided to him. Unless 
he improves, he does not use this power. But this 
power of perpetual self-improvement is one of the 
chief distinctions between man and the lower 
animals, between civilized races and savage races. 
Animals can be trained by man, but they cannot 
train themselves. They can be taught some accom- 
plishments, formed to some new habits ; but where 
man has not done this for them, they remain uned- 
ucated. Savage races reach a certain point of im- 
provement under the influence of circumstances; 
and then they stop, their development arrested. 

3 



34 SELF-CULTURE. 

But, in the higher civilization of Christendom, no 
such limit has been reached, and none such appears 
in the future. Christian civilization forgets the 
things behind, and reaches out to those before. Each 
generation is born on a little higher plane of attain- 
ment, in science, art, and social faculty, than that 
which preceded it. But this social progress de- 
pends on individual progress. Every man who im- 
proves himself is aiding the progress of society; 
every one who stands still, holds it back. The 
progress of society always commences in individual 
souls. A great advancing soul carries forward his 
whole age ; a mean, sordid soul draws it back. That 
is a good reason why the talent should be taken 
from him, and given to another. 

That man was made for progress appears evident 
from the fact that, without progress in some form, 
life itself becomes undesirable, almost unendurable. 
With a sense of progress, even of the lowest kind, 
the interest of life revives. As long as a man has 
hope, he can bear anything, endure anything, and 
be happy. Take from him hope, and his heart is 
dead before his body dies. Nothing that we have, 
or are, can satisfy us for more than a moment. If a 
man fixes his heart on pleasure, then he must have 
some new pleasure to-morrow beyond what he has 
to-day, or he is weary. If he fixes his heart on the 
acquisition of wealth, then he must have a larger 
property this year than he had last. So with fame, 
position, power, knowledge, — all tire us if we have 



MAN'S DUTY TO GROW. 35 

to stand still. We must look forward, or die. We 
are like the man crossing a wild stream on a narrow 
log, — he is only safe while he goes on ; if he stops, 
he falls. The dreadful disease of ennui, of life- 
weariness, attacks all who have no aim, no perma- 
nent purpose, who are not looking forward, onward, 
upward. The only two classes of men who are safe 
from this poison of life are those who have an aim 
and those who are doing steady work. The great 
mass of men and women are contented because they 
are obliged to work. Of those who are not obliged 
to work, those only are contented who continue to 
work because they have some purpose, some object, 
something to which to look forward. The wine of 
life is the sense of progress. 

The love of money, says the Apostle, is the root of 
all evil. So it is ; but it is also the root of a great 
amount of good. The love of money, in bad men 
and weak men, incites to cheating, lying, cruelty, 
meanness, reckless speculation, cold-blooded murder. 
But love of money, as the desire of getting on in 
the world, is a constant source of industry, foresight, 
prudence, economy. It educates the whole commu- 
nity to these virtues. It furnishes hope to ten 
thousand homes. Stand in the street of a large city 
at evening, and see the very poor going to their 
houses. What are they ? Cellars, garrets, hid away 
in dark courts, dirty, without ventilation, with noth- 
ing of comfort about them, still less of beauty or 
taste. You say, " How can they bear life under 



36 SELF-CULTURE. 

such conditions ? " Because in these poor homes 
there is love, there is intelligence, warm social affec- 
tions. A great deal of strong thinking is done in 
them. But, besides this, there is a sense of progress. 
They are getting on, or hoping to do so. They hope 
to lay by enough to buy a small house some day ; to 
educate their children, and to leave them higher up 
in the world than they are themselves. 

Progress, in the sense of acquisition, is some- 
thing ; but progress in the sense of being, is a great 
deal more. To grow higher, deeper, wider, as the 
years go on ; to conquer difficulties, and acquire 
more and more power ; to feel all one's faculties un- 
folding, and truth descending into the soul, — this 
makes life worth living. 

We all believe in education ; but what is it that 
we call education ? A few years at school ; a little 
reading, writing, arithmetic ; a few studies super- 
ficially pursued, — this is commonly understood to be 
education. But education, in the true sense, is not 
mere instruction in Latin, English, French, or his- 
tory. It is the unfolding of the whole human na- 
ture. It is growing up in all things to our highest 
possibility. This is a life-work ; a work in which 
our teachers are the heavens and the earth, day and 
night, work and rest, nature and society, heavenly 
inspirations and human sympathies, success and 
failure, sickness, pain, bereavement ; all of this great 
human life. And with this teaching, there must be 
the earnest desire and purpose in our own soul to 



MAN'S DUTY TO GROW. 37 

grow, to become larger, deeper, higher, nobler, year 
by year. 

For these reasons, we say that all should aim at 
self-culture. " Very early," said Margaret Fuller, 
"I perceived that the object of life is to grow." 
She herself was a remarkable instance of the power 
of the human being to go forward and upward. Of 
her it might be said, as Goethe said of Schiller, " If 
I did not see him for a fortnight, I was astonished 
to find what progress he had made in that interim." 
Every year she lived added depth to her thought, 
largeness to her comprehension, devotion to her 
soul. Being at first somewhat egotistic, disdainful, 
proud, she became, at last, modest, sympathetic, and 
kind to the lowest and humblest. This generous 
nature took its own way to perfection. Whether 
teaching young girls in New England, or nursing 
wounded Italian soldiers in Rome ; whether study- 
ing with untiring energy the literatures of Europe, 
or scraping lint for the patriots who followed Mazzini, 
— she was always going forward and onward to the 
end of her days. 

Consider, also, such a character as that of John 
Milton, who, having determined early to write a 
work " which the world would not willingly let die," 
thought within himself " that he who would truly 
write a heroic poem must make his whole life a 
heroic poem." He, therefore, describes his long 
devotion to that work of improvement, and tells us 
how his " appetite for knowledge was so voracious 



38 SELF-CULTURE. 

that from twelve years of age he hardly ever left his 
studies or went to bed before midnight;" then how 
he " passed seven years in the University of Cam- 
bridge," "with the approbation of the good, and 
without any stain on my character." And how, 
then, " being anxious to visit foreign parts, and 
especially Italy," he saw great kindred souls, like 
Grotius and Galileo, and the antiquities and arts of 
Florence and Eome. After defending the Eeformed 
religion in the capital of the Pope, he returned to 
England, when he heard of the civil commotions 
there ; "for I thought," says he, "it base to be trav- 
elling for a moment abroad, while my fellow-citizens 
were fighting for liberty at home." 

John Milton did make of his whole life a heroic 
poem, and at last, old and blind, fallen on evil days 
and tongues, he sat in his obscurity and composed 
his immortal poem, which the world will never 
" willingly let die." We reverence him most of all, 
because he was himself greater than his poetry. 

" But we cannot all be Miltons," you say. Not 
every man by any amount of culture can become a 
Milton ; not every woman can become a Margaret 
Fuller. No, nor is it so intended. But we can all 
be as faithful in our measure as they were in theirs. 
Each of our souls may be unfolded into something 
as beautiful, as necessary to God's world, as the 
souls of the great heroes and saints. It would not 
do to have too many heroes and saints. An army 
made up wholly of generals would win no battles. 



MAN'S DUTY TO GROW. 39 

Soldiers are as necessary as generals in the battle of 
life,— 

" A battle, whose great scheme and scope 
They little care to know, 
Content, as men at arms, to cope 
Each with his fronting foe." 

I do not believe that we are able to make of our- 
selves anything we please. But we can make of 
ourselves what God pleases we should be. In every 
soul he has deposited the germ of a great future. 
Every soul is a seed. It does not yet appear what 
it shall be, — it is bare grain. Of some seeds may 
be born beautiful roses ; others will become modest 
violets : some will tower into graceful elms, whose 
branches shall bend and wave in the summer air, 
and beneath whose far-reaching shadows the cattle 
shall stand resting in the hot days. Others shall 
become grasses for food, herbs for the cure of disease 
and solace of pain, — " to every seed its own body." 

Formerly we were told of the formation of char- 
acter, and this was inculcated, as though each man 
could carve himself into what he pleased ; that by 
sheer force of will he could make himself a char- 
acter to suit himself. I have heard some prosaic 
persons say that, no doubt, if they had taken the 
trouble, they could have learned to write as good 
poetry as Lord Byron. I believe in no such possi- 
bility. I rather would believe that in every man's 
organization there was decreed, before the founda- 
tion of the world, every man's destiny. Every one 



40 SELF-CULTURE. 

of us was made to be something noble, good, lovely, 
useful, but not all the same. Instead of the forma- 
tion of character, we now speak of development, 
which is a much truer word. There is a seed of the 
future in each of us, which we can unfold if we 
please, or leave to be forever only a stunted, half- 
grown stalk. We are free to do, to become, or re- 
fuse to become, what God means us to be and made 
us be. One shall be a rose in God's garden, " angry 
and brave ; " another a buttercup or a sweet-pea. 
One shall open as a tender morning-glory, and give 
the poet a hint of a strain so sweet that it shall 
comfort all mourning mothers' hearts ; and another 
be a daisy, turned up by a Scottish plough, and, 
dying so, be born again into an immortal song. 
"Why shouldst thou envy thy brother because he is 
more wise, or has more genius, more business faculty, 
than thou ? Why envy thy sister because she is 
more fair, more brilliant ? The buttercup does not 
envy the rose, nor the prairie vine complain because 
it is not a Virginia creeper. God has made every- 
thing beautiful in its time and place ; let it only be 
contented to unfold into that which he intends it to 
become. 

But the power of circumstances, you say, are so 
great that they prevent self-culture. We have no 
time, no opportunity, to make anything of ourselves. 
We are obliged to work for our daily bread ; we are 
fettered by unfavorable circumstances ; how can we 
ever unfold ourselves into anything of value ? 



MAN'S DUTY TO GROW. 41 

These are the arguments of cowardice and unbe- 
lief. Look ! O thou of little faith, at the great 
workers in the world, and see how they have fought 
their way to triumph against all sorts of opposing 
obstacles. Milton wrote " Paradise Lost " in blind- 
ness and poverty. Luther sang in the streets to buy 
bread as a child, and before he could establish the 
Reformation had to encounter the prestige of a 
thousand years, the united power of an imperious 
hierarchy, and the ban of the German Empire. Lin- 
naeus determined to devote his life to the study of 
plants, and had only about forty dollars with which 
to get his education. He was so poor as to be 
obliged to mend his shoes with folded paper, and 
often to beg his meals of his friends. Columbus 
was not sent to discover America in a steamship ; 
but beset and importuned in turn the States of 
Genoa, Portugal, Venice, France, England, and Spain 
before he could get the control of three small vessels 
and one hundred and twenty men. Marlborough and 
Wellington won their great battles in spite of the 
perpetual opposition and resistance of the govern- 
ments for which they were fighting. Hugh Miller, 
who became one of the first geological writers of his 
time, was apprenticed to a stone-mason, and, while 
working in the quarry, already began to study the 
stratum of red sandstone lying below one of red clay. 
Where other men complain of circumstances, the 
man or boy who has an idea and a purpose compels 
these untoward circumstances to serve him. Where 



42 SELF-CULTURE. 

others see nothing but bare rock, he notices analo- 
gies and differences. George Stephenson, the inventor 
of the locomotive engine, was a common collier, 
working in the mines. James Watt, the inventor 
of the steam-engine, was a poor sickly child, not 
strong enough to go to school. John Calvin, who gave 
a theology to the seventeenth and eighteenth centu- 
ries, which it has hardly yet outgrown, was tortured 
with disease all his days. So was Eobert Hall, the 
greatest preacher of his time. What favorable cir- 
cumstances helped the peasant girl of Arc to deliver 
France, when kings and great generals had failed ? 
In what cradle of easy circumstances were Pascal 
and Shakspeare, George Fox the Quaker, Spinoza and 
Charlotte Bronte or Harriet Martineau, rocked into 
success ? They were pillowed on hardship, taught 
by poverty, made strong by neglect, made pure by 
loneliness. All the great founders of religious sects, 
Buddha and Mohammed, Augustine and St. Francis, 
Wesley or George Fox, have been denounced, perse- 
cuted, and reviled through long years of fierce oppo- 
sition. Have we not seen, in our own day, the 
antislavery reformers forcing their way to triumph 
against the combined opposition of churches, politi- 
cal parties, commerce and manufactures, and the 
saloons ? When were circumstances ever favora- 
ble to any great or good attempt, except as they 
were compelled by a determined purpose to become 
favorable ? 

I have given well-known instances of those who 



MAN'S DUTY TO GROW. 43 

have struggled up to fame and influence in spite 
of the most unfavorable circumstances. But these 
famous people, often gifted with that mastering and 
irrepressible quality which we call genius, are not 
the best illustrations of the power of growth in man. 
Go out into any New England village and look 
around you. In each such community you will 
find men and women who have developed power of 
mind and heart by simple fidelity to truth and con- 
science, until they have become sources of light and 
comfort to all the neighborhood. Do any need 
advice, sagacious counsel, wise help, in difficulty ? — 
they go to this village Franklin, to this Oberlin or 
Algernon Sidney of the hillside, and find new cour- 
age and new hope. Is there a poor woman, half 
driven to despair by untoward fortune ? She goes 
to the mother-confessor of the town, and tells her 
tale of woe, and finds sympathy, advice, and help. 
This woman, who has taken no vows in any sister- 
hood, and wears no garb indicating that she is set 
apart to religion, is yet the true patron-saint of the 
little neighborhood. Long experience in well-doing 
has developed a wonderful gift of helpfulness. Sor- 
rows of her own have taught her to feel for others. 
Blessings precede, attend, and follow her footsteps. 
Perhaps she is poor, perhaps unattractive in appear- 
ance or manners, and yet a sweet halo of generous 
kindness spreads soothing influence around her. 
Her cheerful patience and hope, and unfaltering 
courage, area perpetual inspiration. She, by patient 



44 SELF-CULTURE. 

continuance in well-doing, has grown up into all she 
was meant to be by her Creator. 

I gave an address in Central New York one sum- 
mer in which I described such a woman as this, 
and, after the lecture was over, the people of the 
town declared I had been painting the portrait of 
one of their neighbors. Of course I had never seen 
her nor known her, but this shows how many there 
are who by faithfulness inherit the promise, " Give 
and it shall be given you." 

" Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, 
Their sober wishes never learn to stray ; 
Along the cool, sequestered vale of life 

They keep the noiseless tenor of their way." 

A man cannot make of himself anything he 
chooses, but he can carry out God's intentions con- 
cerning him, if, with a single eye to doing what is 
best, and becoming what he was meant to be, he 
makes use of all circumstances, favorable or unfav- 
orable. 

But perhaps you may say, Is not self-culture, in 
the last analysis, a selfish aim ? Is it not better to 
make it one's aim to do the nearest duty, or to do all 
the good we can to our fellow-creatures, rather than 
to cultivate our own powers and unfold our own 
nature ? This objection is a serious one, and de- 
serves to be considered before going further. 

No doubt there is a danger in making self-cul- 
ture an exclusive aim. There are rocks ahead, no 
matter in what direction we may steer. The rock 



MAN'S DUTY TO GROW. 45 

ahead, if we steer toward self-culture, is selfishness. 
The man who devotes himself to the cultivation of 
any faculty, talent, or taste, is in danger of separat- 
ing himself in his sympathies from the mass of his 
fellow-men, in whom that faculty or taste is dor- 
mant. Graver still is the danger which comes from 
making one's self the object of all one's thoughts. 
This has often been seen in religious experience, 
where too much stress has been laid on making per- 
sonal salvation the great object of life. This may 
end in a morbid self-included aim. The West- 
minster Assembly therefore wisely declared that the 
chief end of man was to "glorify God," as well as 
" to enjoy him forever." And the Hopkinsian 
School of Theology went further, and so subor- 
dinated the desire of personal happiness here -or 
hereafter to the love of absolute goodness, as to 
declare that no one was capable of being saved till 
he was willing to be damned for the glory of God. 

But in all extremes there are dangers. The mod- 
ern equivalent for " the glory of God " would be 
Truth, Goodness, Humanity, Universal Progress, or 
some such generalization. But the same danger of 
egotism emerges also here. Men whose lives are 
devoted to these large abstractions, patriots, philan- 
thropists, and reformers of all sorts, are often for- 
getful of daily duties, neglectful of home ties. This, 
at least, is their risk, — if they fall, they fall in that 
direction. 

Thomas Carlyle, at one period, satirized this ten- 



46 SELF- CUL TURE. 

dency of world-reformers with the whole force of 
his sharpest satire. The aim which he suggested 
and urged was the opposite to all this. " Do your 
nearest duty ! " A large class of his admirers im- 
mediately adopted this maxim as their motto in 
life, and began courageously to do their nearest 
duties. And certainly this, too, is a very useful 
rule, if not carried to an extreme, and not made 
an exclusive one. But there is evidently danger 
on this side too. Persons who are confined alto- 
gether to home cares and family duties become nar- 
row. It is very well to talk about " fireside virtues," 
— but how many men and women have had their 
mental and moral growth stifled by limiting their 
obligations to their business and home. The danger 
from this aim is narrowness. If those who adopt it 
fall, they fall in that direction. " Doing good " is 
another aim. To do the greatest good to the greatest 
number, to help all who need help, is often, in our 
time, thought the true " imitation of Christ." The 
modern Christian does not retire into a cell to 
pray, but goes about doing good. He thus avoids 
the risk of narrowness, which attends the man who 
desires only to do the "nearest duty." But there is 
a danger here also, — that of shallowness. The man 
who is always giving, never receiving ; always help- 
ing others, and never feeding his own soul, is in 
danger of becoming empty, itis virtue leans that 
way, and if he falls, he will fall in that direction. 
No single aim, exclusively pursued, is without its 



MAN'S DUTY TO GROW. 47 

risks. Moral forces are polar forces, and every vir- 
tue has its antagonist virtue. We admit, therefore, 
while advocating self-culture, that it should not be 
pursued to the exclusion of other aims, but includ- 
ing them, as necessary adjuncts and helpers. While 
seeking to develop one's powers in an integral way, 
we must bear in mind also one's duty to God and 
man. To live in The Whole, is the way to live 
wisely in any part. 

He who devotes himself to self-culture should 
therefore bear constantly in his mind the justifica- 
tion of this method of life. It is justified, if he 
seeks thus to advance the good of others as well as 
his own ; to use his developed powers for the cause 
of justice, truth, and humanity ; to become a better 
friend to his friends, a greater help and blessing in 
his home, to do the common duties of life more 
ably ; and thus to serve God and man better than he 
could do without such culture. 

In my youth I knew two young men who adopted 
for their aims, the one, self-culture, the other, 
philanthropy. The one sought to educate himself ; 
the other, to do good. After a while, the youth who 
sought self-culture found that to get it he must quit 
the still air of delightful study, and go out to help 
his brother man. He found that he needed work, 
sympathy, society, in order not to freeze ; and so, in 
order to gain self-development, he became a man of 
usefulness. The other, who began by doing good, 
found himself ax, last growing; shallow. He had 



48 SELF-CUL TURE . 

emptied himself, and had to stop to fill himself full 
again. He said, " I must be something, in order to 
do something. I must gain, in order to give." So, 
from motives of philanthropy, he proceeded to culti- 
vate his mind and develop his faculties. 

I do not think that making self-development an 
aim will ever lead to selfishness, if this aim is pur- 
sued in the spirit of the two parables to which I 
have referred. If we cultivate all the powers of 
body and soul in order to use them as talents in the 
service of God, not in order to gain for ourselves 
glory, or merely to excel others, but because God 
has made us to grow and intends us to grow, that 
we may be plants in his garden, every blossom a 
censer swinging its perfume on the air for him, every 
fruit ripening that it may bless and help his crea- 
tures, — then I believe that this aim will be in all 
respects a true and good one. 

These, then, are the conditions, and these the pos- 
sibilities of growth. We are put here to grow, and 
we ought to grow, and to use all the means of growth 
according to the laws of our being. Hereafter we 
will consider further what those laws are, and what 
are the means of our progress. 

We grow only when we become more and more 
ourselves, our best selves, our truest selves, the 
selves that God made us to be. We do not grow 
when we try to be like this man or that, to strive 
for this man's wit or that man's scope, to become 
like this saint or that genius. The rose grows when 



MAN'S DUTY TO GROW. 49 

it unfolds into a rose, not when it tries to become 
any other shrub or flower. The palm springs erect 
to heaven, and grows up a palm ; the vine creeps, 
and hangs, and swings in the air, and pours fragrance 
on the breeze, and grows into a vine. Thus God 
has made each of us to be something, to have a real 
place, and do a real work in this world, and that our 
own work, which no one else can do. If we are 
faithful to the inner light of our own conviction, and 
to the daily duties which God sends to us, we shall 
grow. With glad surprise we shall find ourselves 
becoming genuine and real plants, of use or beauty, 
in the garden of our God. 



II. 



TRAINING AND CARE OF THE 
BODY. 



II. 

TRAINING AND CARE OF THE BODY. 



IN many of the ancient religions the body was 
thought to be the enemy of the soul. The 
duty of a religious man, therefore, was to weaken 
the body, as far as was possible, without destroying 
life. The body was to be kept under by means of 
mortifying practices, — fasting, want of sleep, poor 
clothes or none, by living out of doors, and, finally, 
by self-inflicted flagellation. Only one ancient 
nation — the Egyptian — appears to have had much 
respect for the human body. The Egyptians took 
care of the body during life, and preserved it after 
death. They saw something divine in all living or- 
ganizations. In worshipping animals and vegetables 
they worshipped the mysterious principle of organ- 
ization, that vital power which is to us, as it was to 
them, utterly marvellous and inscrutable. The 
Egyptians thought it religious to adore and worship 
the body ; other nations thought it religious to 
despise and ill-treat the body. Christians have, 
therefore, followed the Brahmins and Buddhists 



54 SELF-CULTURE. 

more than the Egyptians in their view of the body, 
and have thought that the greatest saint was the 
man who lived in a cave, half-starved, and very 
dirty. But there is no such doctrine taught in the 
New Testament. The Son of Man came eating and 
drinking. Neither Paul nor John nor Peter ad- 
vised their disciples to become monks and nuns. 
When Peter repented of denying his master, he did 
not proceed to inflict flagellation on himself, punish- 
ing his body for the sin of his soul. The letter and 
the spirit of the New Testament teach that we are 
to glorify God with our body, as well as our spirit. 
And I proceed now to show how we can glorify God 
with our body ; or, to speak in modern language, 
how the body may be made the means of self-culture. 

We glorify God with our body by keeping it in 
good health. 

Good health is the basis of all physical, intel- 
lectual, moral, and spiritual development. Men and 
women, permanent invalids, have, no doubt, been 
sometimes distinguished as thinkers and workers. A 
powerful soul will triumph over bodily disease ; but 
usually a sick thinker has something sickly in his 
thought. Calvin, whose life was darkened by dis- 
ease, had a morbid and gloomy element in his the- 
ology. Emaciated and sickly saints usually have a 
sickly piety. I believe that Jesus was healthy in 
body as in mind; all his faculties active, and so 
full of vital power as to awe and control even his 
opponents, who came expecting to put him down 



TRAINING AND CARE OF THE BODY. 55 

For a certain amount of vital energy is needed to 
give weight to the best argument. To be a great 
prophet it is necessary, not only to have inspiration 
and conviction, but also to possess a body able to 
endure fatigue, instinct with magnetic force and 
physical energy. I repeat, then, that bodily health 
is the foundation of all rounded self-culture, all in- 
tegral development. I fully admit the power of the 
soul, under great spiritual and moral excitement, to 
compel a weak body to do its bidding. This is one 
of the most eminent proofs that soul is the king r 
and body its subject. A great soul may inspire a 
sick body with strength ; but if the body were well, 
it would obey yet more promptly and effectually. 

I do not sympathize with those reformers who 
say that we are always to blame for being sick, and 
that if we obeyed all the hygienic laws we should 
be always well. Some persons are born diseased, 
with congenital and inherited poison in their blood ; 
some take disease from the air, and from unavoida- 
ble exposure. But, no doubt, a vast amount of sick- 
ness comes from bad living ; from intemperance in 
work, in eating and drinking; from breathing bad 
air, living in damp, dark homes ; from bad food, 
poor clothing, want of recreation and amusement. 
In New England we are not a healthy people. We 
are, to be sure, free from the scourge of the Middle 
and Western States, — fever and ague ; nor are we as 
liable to inflammatory disease as in other places. 
Our demon is consumption, and the natural preven- 



5 6 SELF- CUL TURE. 

tion and cure for consumption is pure air, and 
enough of it. But the great mass of our people shut 
jut the sunshine, shut out the air, shut themselves 
up during our long winter months with air-tight 
stoves in air-tight rooms, using the same air over 
and over again. Ventilation is a lost art. No one 
knows how to ventilate a public building or a rail- 
road car. Along the shores of Maine, where the air 
is pure and balmy, and merely to breathe it is like 
drinking the wine of life, if you go into the houses 
you will find the people pale and sickly. The ex- 
planation is the air-tight stove and the indigestible 
food. Whoever will teach the people of New England 
the advantages of good food, fresh air, and sunshine, 
will renew the physical constitution of the race. 

But the work of physical degeneracy is begun in 
our schools. We put a crowd of little children 
together in an imperfectly ventilated room. We 
task their immature brains with from five to eight 
hours of mental application. We stimulate them 
by a system of prizes, promotion, and praise. We 
make them study at home, in the evening, by lamp- 
light, after having been confined at school half the 
day. When the child's natural tendency to move 
about, to smile, to talk, manifests itself, we repress 
it by the brutal application of the rod. So we treat 
our children, and wonder at the mysterious Provi- 
dence which sends them disease and death, while 
the vagabond newsboys, half clothed and half fed, 
but moving about in the open air all day, are com- 
paratively well. 



TRAINING AND CARE OF THE BODY. 57 

Some years ago, I was placed on the State Board 
of Education. A friend told me that the health of 
the scholars in the Normal schools was suffering 
from over-study. Like others, I refused to believe 
it ; like others, I took for granted that the system 
was about as good as it could be. At last my per- 
tinacious friend urged on me so strongly that it was 
my duty to look into it, that I could refuse no 
longer. Accordingly, I went to two of the State 
Normal schools, in each of them called all the pupils 
together into the large room, and said that I wished 
to talk with the pupils without the teachers taking 
any part in the discussion. I then proceeded to ask 
the following questions : — 

1. How many hours do you study out of school ? 

2. How many of you are usually well, but with 
occasional headaches, weariness, and sleeplessness ? 

3. How many are perfectly well ? 

4. How many have a good appetite ? 

5. How many sleep well all night ? 

The result was that, in both schools, the majority 
studied between four and five hours out of school, 
beside the five hours in school ; only one-sixth were 
perfectly well ; less than one-half had a good appe- 
tite for their food ; while about two-thirds to three- 
fourths slept well. On these facts being brought 
before the Board of Education, they voted that eight 
hours' work, including all the time in school and 
out, should be the maximum allowed; and even 
this is a great deal too much. As regards younger 



58 SELF-CULTURE. 

children, it has been proved by carefully collected 
facts, presented to the British Parliament by Mr. 
Edwin Chadwick, that children' working on half- 
time (that is, studying three hours a day, and devot- 
ing the rest of their time to out-door work) really 
make the greatest intellectual progress in the year. 
Walter Scott said he could never work with his 
brain more than five hours a day, and all physicians 
of standing, without exception, agree that children 
ought never to be confined more than an hour at a 
time, or study more than four hours a day. 

Nervous diseases, also, are becoming very frequent 
in New England. These result, probably, in a great 
degree, from too much brain-work, too little social 
reaction, too great anxiety and care. 

If a healthy body contributes to the health of the 
mind, so, also, a healthy mind keeps the body well. 
Cheerfulness, interest in life, interest in our work, 
enough to do, without haste or rest ; pleasant soci- 
ety, friendship, — these react favorably on the body. 
The haste to get rich, and the intense struggles of 
business rivalry, probably destroy as many lives in 
America every year as are lost in a great battle. 
Patience, equanimity, trust in Providence, content- 
ment with our lot, these keep the body from disease. 
A good conscience is better medicine than all the 
druggists can supply. 

Again, whatever defiles and corrupts the body is 
a sin against God. Intemperance in eating and 
drinking, licentiousness, these defile the temple of 



TRAINING AND CARE OF THE BODY. 59 

God. One of the greatest evils of our time and 
land is intemperance. A large part of the misery 
and crime in our community comes directly from 
this source, and all the influence of religion, educa- 
tion, and law should combine to deliver the com- 
munity from this frightful scourge. Every day we 
hear of some poor woman beaten to death by a 
drunken husband; some man made insane by 
poisonous liquor, sold him by those whom we license. 
For the sake of a few dollars, men spend their lives 
in making and selling these dreadful poisons. Self- 
protection requires that society shall put an end to 
this evil. How this shall be done is one of the 
most difficult, but also one of the most important, 
questions of the time. 

There is another form of sensuality which con- 
stantly endangers the health and peace of the land, 
which demands our best wisdom to control. I fear 
that our community is not aware of the pains taken 
to corrupt the morals of our children, both boys and 
girls, by corrupt exhibitions, publications, pictures. 
It is seriously asserted that there is, in every room 
of our public schools, some scholar who is hired by 
the publishers of improper photographs and books 
to sell them among his companions. Ignorance of 
the laws of life, and the dangers to which they are 
exposed, cause our children to be led astray. Young 
girls are left unprotected, exposed to temptations of 
which they know nothing, and against which no one 
has warned them. The amount of suffering so 



6 SELF- CUL TURE. 

caused, of families filled with misery, of innocence 
misled, is far greater than is generally known. 
Owing to the disgrace attending such evils, they are 
concealed. We apply instruction to prevent and 
cure all other vices and sins ; but this we leave to 
grow in darkness. What we need is to have our 
children carefully taught, either at school or at 
home, or both, the laws of life and health, and the 
dangers of all kinds of excesses. Only so can these 
miseries be abated or prevented. 

God has so bound society together that if one 
member suffer, all suffer. If we leave the poor in 
their alleys exposed to disease, that disease finds its 
way to all our homes. Year after year, our Board 
of Health has told us that the tenement-houses of 
Boston are a disgrace to the city. There are twenty- 
seven hundred of these houses in Boston, visited by 
the Board of Health, many of which are left by 
their wealthy owners in a condition which creates 
disease through defective drainage and dirt. Another 
cause of disease is the wholesale adulteration of 
almost all kinds of food, and the sale of provisions 
unfit for human use. A late report of the Board of 
Health told us that there was scarcely an article of 
food or drink which was not adulterated by some 
worthless or injurious material. One-third of the 
manufacturers of the candy sold to children had put 
the deadly poison, chromate of lead, into their col- 
ored candies, and several cases were reported recently 
where death soon ensued from innocently eating 



TRAINING AND CARE OF THE BODY. 61 

such substances. Out of forty samples of colored 
candy submitted to examination, thirty-six contained 
this active poison. I speak of all these evils here, 
because enlightened public opinion is the only power 
which can cure them. 

But we glorify God with our body, not merely by 
keeping it free from disease, but also by developing 
all its faculties. Education has been confined too 
much to the intellect. We have sought to disci- 
pline the brain to remember, compare, deduce, an- 
alyze, generalize ; but it has not occurred to us that 
the body is as capable of education as the mind. 
Yet we see in special cases how this can be done. 
A singer trains her voice to express exactly every 
cadence and inflection of her song ; why should we 
not learn to modulate our voices to an equal accu- 
racy and delicacy in reading and speech ? Uncon- 
sciously every educated person acquires a certain 
flexibility and refinement of utterance, and you can 
tell in the darkest night whether two persons whom 
you meet are rude or refined, if you only hear the 
tones of their voices in conversation. But why not 
cultivate the power of speaking well? Eobert 
Houdin, the celebrated French juggler, tells us in 
his memoirs that in educating his son to the same 
business he made him walk slowly past the shop 
windows in Paris, until he was able to remember 
every article exhibited in a window from once going 
by. This shows to what quickness of perception the 
eye can be trained. There might be such an educa- 



62 SELF-CULTURE. 

tion of the perceptive organs in our schools, that 
young children should, in a little while, be able to 
tell by their eye the length or height of a room, or 
of a house, tell within an inch the size of a table, 
tell the shades of color in a bunch of flowers, in 
skeins of worsted, or in a carpet ; tell the weight of 
an object by holding it in their hand; tell at a 
glance the exact number of objects suddenly shown 
and removed, just as they now are taught rapid 
processes in intellectual arithmetic. No one, in 
fact, can tell how far the perceptive faculties can be 
educated, because no systematic attempt has ever 
been made to educate them. 

Every organ may be trained, every member. 
Paul says, if the foot should say to the hand, " I 
am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body ? " 
We shut up our feet in tight shoes, and so prevent 
the muscles from developing. But there is a gen- 
tleman in Paris who has lost his arms, who uses his 
feet as if they were hands, and may be seen in the 
galleries copying pictures. Only one nation has 
ever tried to develop the body in its integrity. The 
Greeks, by their games and gymnastic exercises, 
brought out the force, grace, and symmetry of the 
human form, and their sculptors have preserved 
these types in immortal marble. These are the 
natural forms of the human being. Give man air, 
sun, proper food and clothing, ample and varied exer- 
cise, and there is no curve of grace in ancient stat- 
uary which would not be reproduced to-day. 



TRAINING AND CARE OF THE BODY. 63 

The miracles performed by Christ have always 
seemed to me prophetic. They show us what man, 
when he reaches his perfect state, will be able to 
perform. Jesus was the perfect man, sent to reveal 
to us man as well as God, and to show what human- 
ity is to be when it has conquered its weakness, 
risen above its sinfulness, and attained its full de- 
velopment. Jesus cured disease by a word or a 
touch. He thus shows that the soul is superior to 
the forces of external nature, master of the body, 
and that the laws of matter are flexible before the 
powers of the mind and heart. This is the lesson 
of his miracles, of his transfiguration, of his resur- 
rection. "Greater works than these shall ye do, 
because I go to my Father." What we call miracle 
is only the natural supremacy of soul over body, 
the prophecy in one divinely ordained example, in 
one providential person, of what humanity, in the 
coming centuries, is to attain. 

While a healthy body makes a healthy soul, the 
reverse is still more true. Mind lifts up, purifies, 
sustains the body. Mental and moral activity keep 
the body healthy, strong, and young, preserve from 
decay, and renew the life. As a rule, those who 
exercise and unfold their higher nature are long- 
lived. Wentworth Higginson made out a list of 
thirty of the most remarkable preachers of the last 
four centuries. It contained such names as Luther, 
Melancthon, Beza, Knox, Barrow, South, Jeremy 
Taylor, Tillotson, Paley, Blair, Priestley, Massillon, 



64 SELF- CUL TURE. 

Bossuet, Fenelon, Eobert Hall, Chalmers, Wesley, 
Charming. He then proceeded to find the average 
length of their lives, and discovered it to be just 
sixty-nine years. The life and activity of the soul 
sustains and renews the body. Consider John Wes- 
ley, with his perpetual labors, preaching every 
morning at five o'clock, travelling every week hun- 
dreds of miles, never knowing rest or leisure, and 
living till eighty-eight, in full possession of all his 
faculties. Dr. Joseph Priestley, whom Coleridge 
calls " patriot and saint and sage," was a philosopher, 
an inventor, a discoverer in science, a radical in the- 
ology, and he wrote more than eighty books. He 
began life a sickly child, and lived to be seventy- 
one. And, at fifty-four, he said, " So far from suffer- 
ing from application to study, I have found my 
health steadily improve from the age of eighteen to 
the present time." 

In our day gymnastic exercises for young men 
have become a fashion, and I am glad of it. But 
devotion to mere muscular development in rowing, 
ball-playing, lifting weights, &c, is not integral 
education. The mind and heart and soul must be 
exercised also, and more than the muscles, if you 
wish to keep the whole man in health. Health de- 
scends into the body from the soul, though it may 
also ascend in the opposite direction. We must not 
rush into one error while avoiding another, and be- 
cause bodily exercise has been neglected think that 
it will make up for every other exercise. Bodily 
exercise, without mental, profiteth little. 



TRAINING AND CARE OF THE BODY. 65 

The moral and conclusion of what we have said is 
this : We shall not get to heaven by ill-using and 
ill-treating the body, as the old saints hoped to do. 
Nor must we neglect it, and think it of no conse- 
quence compared with the mind. We owe to our 
body, the wonderful temple of the soul, care, cul- 
ture, temperate usage, due training, pure, virtuous 
treatment. We must not defile it with vice, nor 
brutify it by sensual indulgence, but treat it as a 
divine work, to be reverenced and cultivated, like 
every other talent. The body must have its due 
exercise, food, sleep, because it is the temple of the 
soul. The body is to be raised by the power of Chris- 
tianity to a higher condition, no less than the soul. 
There is a natural body and a spiritual body, a ter- 
restrial and a celestial body. Even in this life we 
often see the spiritual body shining through the 
natural one. When the soul is active with thought, 
with noble purpose, with love, it transfigures the 
body, and " o'er-informs its tenement of clay." In 
an infant's smile of pure joy, in the expression of 
generous, noble purpose in youth, in the sweet 
patience which sits serene on the brow of the suffer- 
ing saint, we see, even here, the body which is to be. 
Milton, in his poem concerning the " aidless, inno- 
cent lady," tells us : — 

" That, when, a soul is found sincerely pure, 
A thousand liveried angels lackey her, 
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, 
And, in clear dream and solemn vision, 
5 



66 SELF-CULTURE. 

Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear ; 
Till oft converse with heavenly hahitants 
Begins to cast a beam on the outward shape, 
The unpolluted temple of the soul, 
And turn it by degrees to the soul's essence, 
Till all be made immortal." 
! 

To conclude, Montaigne expresses the sum of it 
all when he says, " Our work is not to train a soul 
by itself alone, nor a body by itself alone, but to 
train a man ; and in man soul and body can never 
be divided." 

So many books have been written on the care of 
the health, and so much attention has been called 
to hygienics within a few years, that it is not nec- 
essary here to go into details. Let us briefly sum- 
marize the substance of all in the following rules : 

Take exercise every day, in the open air if possi- 
ble, and make it a recreation, and not merely a duty. 
Eat wholesome food. Drink pure water. Let your 
house and room be well ventilated. Take time 
enough for sleep. Do not worry. 

Watch yourself, but not too closely, to find what 
exercise, air, diet, &o, agrees with you. No man 
can be a rule for another. One man can eat all 
things ; another, who is weak, can only eat herbs. 
Experience, in this regard, is better than rules. 

If you consult a physician, it is better to do it be- 
fore you are unwell than later. Prophylactics are 
better than therapeutics. 

The time will come, let us hope, when all boya 



TRAINING AND CARE OF THE BODY. 67 

will be taught the use of tools, and all girls the 
principles of cooking. A carpenter's bench and 
tools in a house -will furnish as good exercise as 
dumb-bells. And is it not a little discreditable to a 
well-educated man to have to send for a mechanic 
when anything is out of order in the house. Ought 
we not to be able to ease a door, make a shelf, stop 
a leak in a leaden pipe, milk a cow, harness our own 
horse. An hour spent in such work about the house 
or stable every day would not only exercise the body, 
but relieve the tension of a student's brain. 

Consider this : No carpenter will go to his work 
without seeing that his chest of tools is in good or- 
der. The musician examines his instrument every 
day to keep it in tune. We have our horses carefully 
groomed. Let us do as much, at least, as this for our 
own body. That is our wonderful box of tools, — 
our organ with thousands of pipes. It has, no doubt, 
a remarkable power of self-recovery, of repairing its 
own lesions. But do not try it too much. It is the 
faithful servant of the mind : but let the mind treat 
its servant tenderly and wisely. 

The body constantly acts on the mind: this is 
now universally recognized. It is not as often 
noticed how the mind acts on the body. A mind 
strengthened by truth and a determined purpose 
will support a feeble body, and enable it to do won- 
ders. Mental excitement often cures bodily disease. 
There are authentic cases of persons given over by 
their physicians, who resisted death and saved their 



68 SELF-CULTURE. 

lives by a strong determination not to die. Any in- 
fluence which rouses the mind to action will often 
cure the body. One day we shall have a mind-cure 
hospital, where bodily disease will be relieved by 
applications to the mind. Meantime, how much can 
be done for invalids by visits from cheerful, bright, 
entertaining visitors, — by religious influences which 
inspire faith and hope, not doubt and fear. What- 
ever takes the mind out of itself, causes it to look 
up, interests it in great truths, helps the body too. 
Hospitals for invalids, especially for the insane, 
should be carefully constructed on the principle of 
surrounding the patient with sunshine and beauty, 
and removing all harsh sights and sounds. Then, 
let those radiant natures, to whom God has given 
the power to charm and inspire, employ this gift 
(so often wasted on circles which have everything 
else) in visiting the depressed and the forlorn, the 
sick and the weak, — and they will wonder at the 
good they can do. 



ILL 



THE USE OF TIME. 



III. 

THE USE OF TIME. 



FEW of the facts of our life are more mysterious 
and inexplicable, more paradoxical and con- 
tradictory, than the commonest and simplest of all, 
— that is, the progress of time. Time is the most 
rigid, and at the same time the most elastic, of all 
things. Time is a stream which bears all creatures 
on at the same rate. All beings who live on the 
surface of the earth are living in the same day of 
the same month and year. Time and events happen 
alike to all. No one can hold back longer than the 
rest ; no one can hurry forward so as to get a month, 
a day, an hour, a minute, a second, in advance of 
the rest. Why should it not be so ? Why should 
not sluggishness of hand and laziness of mind drop 
back, and be left a month or a year behind in time, 
as they would be left a mile or ten miles behind in 
space ? Why should not genius and energy get on 
faster, and arrive sooner ? But no ! We are all 
immersed in the same now. The same moment ar- 
rives at once to all the thousand millions of beings 



72 SELF-CULTURE. 

on the earth. Ah, if we could only go back when 
we choose, and live the past over again ! What a 
gift, more wonderful than that imagined in any fairy 
story, this would be ! If some angel should come, 
and say you may be as you were a year ago, before 
that fatal crime was committed, that terrible mistake 
made ; before that opportunity came which you 
threw away and lost forever ; before that dear friend 
was taken from you by death, so that you could 
show him the love you felt in your heart, but ne- 
glected to manifest in action ! If in the light of 
those results, of that experience, which is the divine 
judgment here on all human actions, we could begin 
our lives anew ! 

No. The moment which has not yet come is per- 
fectly fluid. It is open to us all. We can put into 
it what we please. It arrives out of the future a 
shadowy possibility ; it crystallizes in that infinites- 
imal moment we call the present, around whatever 
we think, or feel, or say, or do, and is gone forever, 
unalterable, holding in its adamantine grasp the 
changeable, irrecoverable action. What is done, 
is done forever ; what is omitted, is omitted for- 
ever. The good action is sealed up, and made 
immortal ; the bad action is sealed up, and can 
never be recalled, though we seek to repent of it 
diligently, and with tears. No awful fate, no tre- 
mendous doom, no iron necessity, can compare with 
this relentless grasp of Time, which seizes and re- 
tains, inexorable, unforgiving, all that passes into its 



THE USE OF TIME. 73 

irresistible embrace. So that time, of all things the 
most airy and impalpable before it comes, seems to 
be of all things the most solid and substantial when 
it has gone by. 

Yet, on the other hand, this same element of time 
is a very flexible and elastic material. How it 
stretches out to some persons ! How much more a 
day, an hour, is to one person than to another ! How 
much more some people put into a month or a year 
than others do ! Yes, how much more to each of us 
are our few hours of fiery inspiration and insight 
than the months in which we hammer mechanically 
this experience into opinion on the anvils of logic ! 
How much more we live in the deep, momentary 
experiences of faith, generosity, love, than in the 
dreary years of routine which follow them !• We 
see then what is meant by redeeming time. It is to 
fill the hours full of the richest freight ; to fill them 
with the life of thought, feeling, action, as they 
pass by. 

It is to live so as to be glad, not sad, when we 
look back. It is to conquer in the great struggle 
with the devil, with incarnate evil, and to have the 
sentence pronounced by the Rhadamanthine voice 
of the past, — Well done ! This is the safety vault 
into which we can put our treasure, sure that no 
thieves can break in and steal. One moment of 
self-conquest, one good action really done, one gen- 
erous deed actually performed, yes, one effort to do 
right really made, has the seal of time put on it, and 



74 SELF-CULTURE. 

no power in heaven nor all the fires of hell can 
melt that wax from the eternal bond. This last 
year, one man has made a fortune, and invested it 
in the best securities, — in mortgages, in houses, in 
railroads. But houses burn; thieves steal your 
bonds; robbers of a worse kind, who walk about 
State Street and Wall Street with unblushing faces, 
devour the property of the stockholders in a sham 
corporation. Another man has given his wealth for 
a good object, and that is safe forever ; no thief can 
touch it, and no railroad president or bank teller 
can ever run away with that money. 

"What a difference between two lives, equally 
long, of which one has been wasted, the other re- 
deemed ! One has gone on without a purpose or 
aim; the other, steadily directed to some noble 
object ; the one, empty of love, thought, action ; the 
other, crowded with hours of glorious life ; the one, 
in which, as we look back, we can see nothing but 
eating and sleeping, and mechanical, empty labor ; 
in the other, the lowest toil made bright by a good 
and generous purpose, the humblest lot gilded and 
glorified by high thoughts and large loves. This is 
the real everlasting punishment, — to remember the 
irrevocable past. Just as far as we have wasted 
our time we go into everlasting punishment, for 
what shall ever annihilate the black record of the 
evil we have done ? I suppose that even the most 
blessed saint must sometimes go into this kind 
of everlasting punishment. And just as far as we 



THE USE OF TIME. 75 

have redeemed time we go into everlasting bliss ; for 
the record of good is equally indestructible. One 
man looks back — yes, we all look back sometimes 
— with a sense of utter loss, like that of Coleridge. 
Coleridge, in one of the most pathetic passages in 
English literature, speaks of the 

" Sense of past youth, and manhood come — in vain ! 
And genius given and knowledge won — in vain ! 
And all that I have culled in wood-walks wild, 
And all that patient toil has reared, and all 
Commune with thee has opened out — hut flowers 
Strewed on my hearse, and scattered on my bier, 
In the same coffin, for the self-same grave." 

And sometimes we look back, thinking of one 
good act done, one great truth seen, one deep affec- 
tion experienced ; and then we can use the lofty 
strain of Dry den, in his noble translation of Horace, 
and say : — 

" Happy the man, and happy he alone, 
He who can call the hour his own, 
He who, secure within, can say, 
' To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day ! 
Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine, 
The joy I have possessed, in spite of Fate, is mine ! 
Not heaven itself upon the past has power ; 
For what has been has been, and I have had my hour.' " 

Life becomes solemn enough when we look at it 
from this point of view. It becomes vastly more 
solemn than death ; for we are not responsible for 
dying : we are responsible for living. Why talk of 



76 SELF-CULTURE. 

a judgment to come on some great day in the future, 
when every day is a day of judgment ; when every 
moment, as it goes by, judges us ; when the act we 
put into it is carved into this terrible past in letters 
more lasting than those which have resisted for five 
thousand years the sands and the revolutions of 
Egypt. Carved on the granite there, you may read 
the actions done fifty centuries ago ; you may see 
the task-masters, by the command of the great 
Eameses, beating the poor Hebrew slaves at their 
work of building his cities. Those stones may 
decay at last, and that record be lost. But not an 
idle word, not an unkind word that we say, not a 
moment of our life, but gives an account of itself in 
the imperishable record of the past. 

As regards self-culture, all depends on the use of 
time. All those who have unfolded great powers 
have been hard workers. Genius itself is nothing 
but an immense power of work. It is the power of 
immersing one's self in work, but making it all play 
and joy by the quantity of life put into it. Genius 
always " redeems the time." 

There were four men who lived during the last 
century, who all lived to be very old, whose lives 
were contemporaneous during the largest part of the 
period from 1700 to 1800, who were different in 
many respects, but who were all alike in this power 
of turning time into thought and action. They 
were Swedenborg, Voltaire, Wesley, and Franklin. 
Swedenborg died in 1772, aged eighty-four; Vol- 



THE USE OF TIME. 77 

taire died in 1778, also aged eighty-four ; Franklin 
died in 1790, also aged eighty-four; Wesley died in 
1791, aged eighty-eight. Perhaps no four men of 
the century exercised a greater influence on the age 
than these. Swedenborg's thought has been slowly 
filtering into philosophy and theology, spiritualizing 
both. To him, the whole world, both in this life 
and the life to come, is a shining web of divine 
laws, — God descending into nature, into the soul, 
into the body, and making everything divine. His 
thought, so subtle and so deep, is gradually conquer- 
ing the materialism of philosophy and theology, and 
so bringing down what he called the New Jerusalem, 
or the sight of divine truth incarnate in all actual 
facts and laws. But what a vast amount of thought 
and study ; what patient labor on works which no 
one in that day, and but few even in ours, have 
cared to read ; what entire confidence in the power 
of truth ; what fidelity to his thought, persistency in 
his purpose, cool ardor, patient energy, marked the 
life of the solitary thinker ! He was the most 
lonely man on the earth in his day ; hardly a soul 
sympathized with him, or understood him. Yet he 
worked on, without haste or rest, an incarnation of 
thought, sure that somewhere men would be found 
to read and understand what God told him to say. 
Surely he, " redeemed the time." 

How different was Voltaire ! The man of society, 
the man of the world, the man who wrote for the 
day and hour, — whose every book and pamphlet 



78 SELF-CUL TURE. 

had an immediate answer and welcome ; the critic, 
the wit, the superficial but acute thinker on all 
subjects under heaven, but who seldom lifted his 
eyes to the heaven itself ; the man from whose soul 
religious sentiment seemed to have been eliminated, 
in whose organization reverence was omitted. He 
also did his work, — to expose shams, to dethrone 
superstitions, to attack hoary abuses, to claim for 
man justice, freedom, opportunity. He worked, not 
by faith, but by sight, in the present moment, but 
with indefatigable energy, redeeming the time. And 
if, as the preacher says, " there is a time for every- 
thing," that time was certainly the time for Yoltaire, 
when the world was so full of evils and abuses, which 
needed such stinging scorn as his for their correc- 
tion. The pulpit has used Yoltaire only as the 
type of the worst unbelief and sin. But do him this 
justice, he put his whole soul into his rather barren 
work of destruction. It was the best he knew, and 
he did it. And he did it well. 

How different again, both from Swedenborg and 
Voltaire, was Wesley! No mystic like Sweden- 
borg, but with an intense practical desire to turn all 
the doctrinal truth he saw into instant life, he made 
the new heavens and earth in England of which the 
Northern sage dreamed. No man ever so fully be- 
lieved that " now is the day of salvation " as John 
Wesley. No man ever went so entirely out of the 
religion of form, doctrine, and ceremony, into that of 
life, as he. His profoundest conviction was this : 



THE USE OF TIME. 79 

that no human being lived on earth so bad or base, 
so stupid or worldly, so utterly corrupt and worth- 
less, but that, if he could believe it, God was ready 
to kindle in his soul a fire of love which would 
wholly consume this evil. His business was to 
make men believe it. For this faith he lived. In 
this faith he worked, redeeming the time. He saw 
the dead in sin coming to life all around him, he 
passed his happy years in this divinest of labors ; 
he died a soldier with his armor on, having done a 
work which neither God nor man can ever willingly 
let die. 

And now look at the fourth whom I have named, 
Dr. Franklin, — differing from the thre,e, with none of 
the mysticism of Swedenborg in his nature, yet with 
none of the sneering scepticism of Voltaire. A prac- 
tical man, bent on doing work, — not living, like 
Voltaire, for literary success, not feeding on flattery 
and popular applause. He had also his share of 
hard trial and opposition, and lonely struggle. But 
he rose out of it, higher and higher, by the steady 
strength with which he did his work, — plucking the 
lightning from the clouds, and the sceptre of Amer- 
ica from the hand of obstinate, stupid, conscientious 
George the Third. When he stood before the Eng- 
lish Lords in Council, the object of abuse and ridi- 
cule ; when he stood in the midst of the glittering 
court of France, the object of praise and admira- 
tion ; when he stood in the American Congress, with 
his calm good sense directing its counsels; and 



80 SELF-CULTURE. 

when he tried experiments with his kite and his 
key, — he was still the faithful servant of his highest 
thought, he also was " redeeming the time," and he 
redeemed it well. 

We see then how it is. We see, by these exam- 
ples, that if a man will be faithful to his highest 
conviction, to the best thought which God gives 
him to say, the best act given him to do, he will 
change time into life. He will bring forth fruit in 
youth, and in age will be still green and nourishing, 
like all the four men I have named. This is the 
first condition, then, of making the most of time, 
that we shall be always true to our best thought, 
that we shall do with our might whatever our hand 
finds to do. We must understand the value of the 
present moment. We must not spend our days in 
grieving over the past, but forget the things that are 
behind. We must not look with anxiety or fear to 
the future, but let to-morrow take thought for the 
things of itself. On this point philosophy and 
Christianity are at one. Jesus says, " Take no 
thought for the morrow," and Horace, the epicu- 
rean, says the same. " What may happen to-morrow, 
do not inquire, but whatever Fortune brings to-day 
count as clear gain." 

Yes ; time may be kept. Those who have 
wrought one hour in a sincere fulness of life may 
accomplish as much as long years of common toil. 
Therefore, all that we said at the beginning of this 
lecture of the inflexible and unchanging past is 



THE USE OF TIME. 81 

indeed true. But it is also true that we who know 
how much of time we have wasted, may begin to 
work now in such a spirit that we may redeem our 
past years from their emptiness by the overflow of 
our present fulness. So it sometimes happens that 
a single bright and generous act serves to atone for 
the abuse of years. So, in what is perhaps the best 
story of Dickens, the man of wasted life gave him- 
self to die in the place of another in the Eeign of 
Terror, and so by a sunset of glory and purity gilded 
the clouds of his dark and stormy day. 

John Newton, friend of the poet Cowper, author 
of some of the Olney hymns, led a wild and troubled 
youth. He deserted from an English man-of-war; 
was caught, flogged, and degraded ; commanded an 
African slave-trader during four years, during all 
which time, he says, "he never had the least scru- 
ples as to its lawfulness." But who thinks of 
that evil career, obliterated and swallowed up as 
it was by his long subsequent life of devoted use- 
fulness ? 

But while we value every hour of life, it is impor- 
tant also to remember that there is time enough for 
all that is to be done. The first rule is to do every- 
thing with our might. The second rule is not to 
hurry. It is better to do a single thing as well as 
we can, than to do a great many things imperfectly. 
It is better to read one good book thoroughly, than 
a great many superficially. I recollect hearing of a 
young man who thought of preparing himself for 

6 



82 SELF-CULTURE. 

the ministry, a farmer's son, with only a common- 
school education, who came to a minister and asked 
for some book to study in his leisure hours. The 
minister gave him " Locke on the Understanding." 
At the end of six months, he told his friend that he 
was discouraged by his own stupidity, for he had 
not half read it. At the end of twelve months, he 
brought it back, and said, " I can never be a student, 
for it has taken me a whole year to read this book." 
But, on examination, it was found he knew everything 
in the book perfectly, and his friend told him that 
to read one book thus was to be a scholar. That 
would help him as long as he lived. 

As I look back and remember the books I have 
read, I find those that have done my mind the most 
good are not those I have gone over superficially, 
but those which I have eaten and drunk, and made 
a part of myself. It is an old saying, that the most 
terrible thinker and scholar is the man of one book, 
homo unius libri. Let a person know all about the 
Bible, let him know all' of Shakspeare, or let him 
be perfectly familiar with the best of Lord Bacon's 
writings, or of Leibnitz, or of Swedenborg, or of 
Plato, or Dante, or Goethe, — any one of them, and 
he will be a highly accomplished man. But we 
waste our time doing too many things, reading too 
many books, seeing too many people, talking too 
much. Therefore we do nothing well, read nothing 
thoroughly, know no one really, say nothing that 
is worth hearing. Let us write in our souls this 



THE USE OF TIME. 83 

maxim, — quality, not quantity, never hurry ; take, 
time to do what you ought to do as well as you can 
do it. That is the only way to take time. 

Much time is wasted in schools, academies, and 
colleges, by wrong methods. In my youth, both at 
school and in college much time was lost by the 
recitations. In college we had three recitations, 
each day, of each division; each lasting an hour. 
Thus we spent three precious hours every day in 
hearing other young men recite, more or less badly, 
what we had spent already some hours in studying 
ourselves. If we had learned the lesson properly, 
we could learn nothing more by hearing it recited 
by others. If the teacher had explained or illus- 
trated the difficult passages, that would have been an 
advantage ; but in those days he regarded it as his 
sole business to hear the recitation, and to mark on 
a paper by his side the degree of accuracy attained 
by each scholar. This took his whole time. A 
better method has been introduced in some places. 
Teachers now have learned that it is their business 
to teach, — a fact of which, in those days, they 
seemed wholly unaware. I have known teachers 
of the better sort, who would not allow a class to go 
through an Algebra or Geometry without making 
sure that every one of the class understood everything 
in the book. That was teaching. Eapid progress is 
made by the help of a teacher who is ready to assist 
the pupils over difficult places, and interest them in 
what is wonderful, remarkable, beautiful in the sci- 
ence or the book. 



84 SELF-CUL TURE. 

In the study of languages much time is wasted 
by insisting on too much grammar and dictionary. 
Instead of the dictionary, students should use 
translations or interlined text-books. The gram- 
mar should lie near at hand, to be consulted while 
translating, but should not be committed to mem- 
ory. All pedants will cry out against such sugges- 
tions; but I have on my side the wisest writers on 
education, such as Milton, Locke, Montaigne, and 
a multitude of others. In Milton's Prose Works 
there is a Latin Grammar in about twelve pages, 
which he declares enough for practical purposes 
in learning Latin; and Milton was the great 
Latin scholar of his day. Locke, in his treatise 
on Education, advises that, in teaching Latin, no 
grammar be used at all, but to have a teacher 
able to teach Latin by conversation, without the 
perplexity of rules, just as a child learns his 
own language. " For," says Locke, " if you will 
consider it, Latin is no more unknown to a child 
than English is, when he comes into the world. 
And yet he learns English without master, rule, or 
grammar." But Locke recommends, when the right 
person cannot be found to teach Latin by talking, 
as the next best method to use an interlined trans- 
lation ; and in this case it may be necessary, he adds, 
to learn the formation of verbs, and the declension 
of nouns and pronouns. 

But the chief rule for saving time in study, 
is to study only what interests the mind, and 



THE USE OF TIME. 85 

when the mind is interested. Time is wasted in 
dawdling over studies into which we put no heart. 
This also the sagacious Locke constantly dwells 
upon ; as do other writers of insight. Thus Her- 
bert Spencer insists, as a fundamental principle, 
that instruction must be always made interesting. 
" Nature," he says, " has made the healthful exer- 
cise of our faculties, both of body and mind, pleasur- 
able." He adds that with all, except the most 
complex, which come into activity the last, " the 
immediate gratification consequent on activity is 
the normal stimulus." The method of study which 
produces delight is proved, he says, by all tests, to 
be the true one. 

Of this we may be sure, that every method which 
can be devised to make study interesting, saves time 
to the student. 

" I would fain," says Locke, " have any one name 
to me that tongue that any one can learn or speak 
as he should do, by the rules of grammar. Lan- 
guages were made not by rules of art, but by acci- 
dent, and the common use of the people. And he 
that speaks them well has no other rule but that." 
" I know not why any one should waste his time and 
beat his head about the Latin grammar, who does 
not intend to be a critic, or make speeches in it." 
It is lamentable to think of the amount of time 
wasted by children in committing to memory use- 
less rules of grammar, when in the same time they 
might have learned to read the language with ease. 



86 SELF-CULTURE. 

D'Arcy Thompson, in his excellent book called 
"Day Dreams of a Schoolmaster," says that all 
the Latin grammar which need be committed to 
memory by a boy could be contained in twenty -four 
pages. 

The Latin grammar has been made absurdly 
complicated and' difficult, but the absurdities of the 
English grammar taught in our common schools 
almost exceed belief. If grammar is " the science 
of language," it is a very difficult one, and ought 
never to be taught to children. But if it is " the 
art of speaking and writing correctly," then nine- 
tenths of what is usually taught is worse than use- 
less. We do not learn to write and speak correctly 
by committing to memory unintelligible definitions 
and rules, but by reading well-written books, and 
conversing with educated speakers. 

Learning to spell by means of spelling-books, 
orally recited, is another foolish way of wasting 
time. No one ever wishes to spell orally, — he only 
needs knowledge of spelling when he writes. Spell- 
ing, therefore, should be learned at the same time 
as writing, — by the teacher giving out sentences to 
be written down containing the words usually mis- 
spelt. 

No work which we do trains the powers, except 
that which we do thoroughly. Imperfect and slov- 
enly work leaves a slovenly result in our own 
mind. Our thought becomes vague, and our judg- 
ment loses its definite outline. Therefore let us 
avoid hurry. 



THE USE OF TIME. 87 

It is not the longest lives that have been the 
most full. Eafaelle died when he was thirty-seven, 
while Michel Angelo lived to be ninety. During 
his thirty-seven years, Eafaelle seems to have done 
as much as Michel Angelo did in his ninety years, 
though the genius and industry of the latter were, 
perhaps, fully equal to those of the other. For a 
single work perfectly done is enough to make a full 
life. Handel lived to be eighty ; Mozart died when 
he was only thirty-six. But who remembers how 
many years they lived ? As you listen to the music 
of Mozart, and as you look at the infants of Eafaelle, 
you find that each of them attained that marvellous 
summit of human experience in which joy and grief 
become one. They solve the problem of evil by 
showing that the deepest sorrow may be one with 
the highest joy. When we look at the face of the 
infant Jesus in the pictures of Eafaelle, and listen 
to the music of Mozart, we perceive in both a per- 
fect union of pathos and joy, of sadness and gladness, 
of gloom and glory, of light and shade, of sunshine 
and shadow, of tender pity and triumphant praise. 
That which no philosophy and no theology can 
do, art has done, to show us the element of good 
in evil, to show that evil is the black carbon out 
of which Nature manufactures her most brilliant 
diamonds. 

The death of Christ has given this faith to 
the world. Jesus lived only thirty-one or thirty- 
three years; the first thirty years were years of 



88 SELF-CULTURE. 

preparation, of silence, obscurity, apparent inaction, 
Then came one year of real life, which has trans- 
formed the world, created a new faith in God and 
man, caused us to believe in good in spite of all 
appearance, and by means of this undying faith 
in good has made goodness real. What a mean- 
ing in the death of Jesus is this, — - that the most 
cruel and wicked action has been so transfigured 
and glorified that we forget all the horror of the 
cross, and make it the symbol of triumph ! I 
presume that the cross which Constantine saw in 
the skies was not miraculous in the common mean- 
ing of that term. But can anything be more mirac- 
ulous in reality than this fact, — that, in three 
hundred years from the death of Jesus, this instru- 
ment of a slave's torture should become the standard 
of the Eoman Empire ? This miracle was but one 
of the results of Christ's single year of labor. 

To make the best use of time, we must have 
life in the soul. He who is something will do 
something ; he who is more will do more, and he 
who is most will do most. Jesus, in a single year 
of active life, has done the greatest work which has 
ever been done in the world ; hence we may infer 
that his was the fullest soul that has ever been in 
the world. 

Therefore, it is not a quantity of time that is 
needed in order to do a great work, but the power 
of using time. What we need is the eternal youth 
of the heart, the undying love of truth, which will 



THE USE OF TIME. 89 

lift us above the hard conservatism which refuses 
to see what it has never yet seen, and so never 
learns anything new. 

To make the best use of time we must keep the 
old and accept the new. There are two kinds of 
men who can make no progress, — the conservative 
who is so conservative as never to accept the new 
births of time, and the radical who is so radical as 
to drop the old truth in order to take the new one. 
This obstinate conservatism, which shuts its eyes, 
and closes its ears, and hardens its heart against 
every new revelation of the diviue spirit, is typified 
by the friend of Galileo, who refused to look through 
his telescope to see the satellites of Jupiter, because, 
according to his theory, there ought not to be any 
satellites there. " Look and see them," said Galileo. 
" I will not look," replied the other. " What is the 
use of looking ? I know that there are none there." 
But the emblem of that radicalism which can only 
get on new ground by deserting the old ground is 
the little child, whose hands are so small that he 
drops the apple he already holds, in order to take 
another. True progress is in keeping all the old 
truth and accepting all the new truth. So we 
save the time, and go on from good years to better 
years. 

We must be something in order to do something, 
but we must also do something in order to be some- 
thing. The best rule, I think, is this : If we find it 
hard to do good, then let us try to be good. If, on 



90 SELF-CULTURE. 

the other hand, we find it hard to be good, then let 
us try to do good. Being leads to doing, doing leads 
to being. Yet below both as their common root is 
faith, — faith in God, in man, in ourselves, in the 
eternal superiority of right over wrong, truth over 
error, good over evil, love over all selfishness and all 
sin. It is this undying faith which keeps the mind 
and heart young, which makes every day dawn 
with a divine beauty, as the portal opening into a 
heavenly life; makes every year come with the 
charm of a new hope of something better than the 
last ; and makes of age and death the opening high- 
way into the eternal heaven of God. 

In this spirit of faith let us begin each day, and 
we shall be sure to " redeem the time " which it 
brings to us, by changing it into something infinite 
and eternal. There is a deep meaning in this 
phrase of the Apostle, to redeem time. We redeem 
time, and do not merely use it. We transform it 
into eternity by living it aright. 



IV. 



SELF-KNOWLEDGE. 



IV. 

SELF-KNOWLEDGE. 



THE subject of this lecture is Self-knowledge. 
Is it desirable, is it possible ? And if so, 
how is it to be attained ? 

" Know thyself," was the maxim of Thales, the 
old Greek realist ; a maxim thought so divine that 
the ancients said it fell from heaven. " Search and 
try your ways," said the Prophet of Judea. Modern 
Christian teachers have insisted on self-examination 
as the perpetual and universal duty. " Thomas a 
Kempis," " Taylor's Holy Living," all books of prac- 
tical piety, inculcate it without end. " See what 
your motive is in everything," says Jeremy Taylor, 
" for the holy intention is to the actions of a man 
that which the soul is to its body, or the form to 
matter, or the root to the tree, or the sun to the 
world, or the fountain to a river, or the base to a 
pillar ; for without these the body is a dead trunk, 
the matter is sluggish, the tree is a block, the world 
is darkness, the river is quickly run dry, the pillar 
rushes into flatness and ruin ; and the action is sin- 



94 SELF-CULTURE. 

fill, unprofitable, and vain." Not only religious 
teachers, but philosophers and poets, have taught the 
importance of self-knowledge. Burns says, — 

" wad some power the giftie gie us, 
To see ourselves as others see us ! " 

And Pythagoras advised that "sleep should not 
seize upon the region of the senses before we have 
three times recalled the conversation and incidents of 
the day," in order to know what we have done or 
omitted to do. 

In a moral point of view, the importance of self- 
examination is that we may not deceive ourselves, 
imagining we are better than we are. Man has the 
curious power of deceiving himself, when he cannot 
deceive others. It is sad even to tragedy to see how 
some persons are puffed up, like the frog who 
thought to make himself as large as the bull by 
swelling. People deceive themselves about their 
capacity, their motives, their character. How many 
persons persuade themselves, whenever they wish 
to do anything, that it is their duty to do it. Some 
persons go through the world believing all the time 
that they do just about what they ought, and be- 
cause they have some rule or principle of action, 
think they are conforming to it. They " cast the 
mote out of the eye " of their brother, and do not 
perceive the beam in their own. They " compound 
for sins they are inclined to, by damning those they 
have no mind to." Then we call them hypocrites. 



SELF-KNOWLEDGE. 95 

But they are not so, not deliberate hypocrites. They 
are not cheating us, they are cheating themselves. 
They are walking on straight toward a day of judg- 
ment, utterly ignorant of what they really are. 
They are like the cruel jailer in Charles Reade's 
story, who tortured his prisoners in the most horri- 
ble way, and then went to his room and cried over 
" Uncle Tom's Cabin," and did not think it possible 
there could be such cruelty as Legree's in the world. 

But for purposes of intellectual self-culture, 
as for those of religion and morality, self-knowledge 
is necessary. Before we can really acquire any ac- 
complishment or develop any power, we need to 
know what we can do, and what we cannot. For 
men are not made alike ; they are made differently. 

There is a theory, I know, which assumes that all 
persons are alike at first, and become different from 
force of circumstances, or from their own efforts. 
No father or mother who has brought up a family of 
half a dozen children will believe such a doctrine as 
that. The little things, as soon as they are born, 
show symptoms of the traits which they continue to 
have all their days. One child has a strong will, 
but is easily guided by his affections ; another is 
cold ; one is quick, but changeable ; another slow, 
but persistent ; one is reserved, another open ; one 
has a taste for music, so that he sings from his 
cradle ; another a tendency to construction, so that 
he makes all his toys himself; one, like George 
Washington, cannot tell a lie, and another, poor 



96 SELF-CULTURE, 

little thing ! finds it hard to tell the truth. Just as 
a young duck runs to the water, young children run 
to the work or play, the pictures, the poetry, which 
they are made for. Every observing father and 
mother sees this, and laughs at the philosopher who 
tells them that children are horn alike, and made 
different by circumstances. 

No ; " every man has his special gift from the 
Lord, — some after this fashion, and some after that ; " 
and the point is to find out what we are, what we 
are made to be, and to do. This sort of self-knowl- 
edge prevents discouragement. Children are often 
thought to be stupid, and think themselves that they 
are so, merely because they are trying to do some- 
thing they are not fitted for. Other children are 
thought infant prodigies, because they happen pos- 
sibly to possess a fine verbal memory, and can re- 
peat, like parrots, what they hear. So they grow 
conceited upon their one faculty ; and find out, too 
late, that the memory of words is only one part, and 
a very small part, of intellectual power. Walter 
Scott was considered a very stupid boy, out of whom 
nothing could be made. He was a kind of fruit 
which ripened slowly ; the best kind often does so. 
I heard Dr. Spurzheim say that a young man had 
that day told him, "Dr. Spurzheim, you do not 
know me, but you were the greatest benefactor to 
me on one occasion. You came into the school 
where I was. I was considered the greatest block- 
head in the school, and believed it myself, and did 



SEL F-KNO WLED GE. 7 

not think it worth while to try to learn. You put 
your hand on my head, and said, ' Perceptive organs 
small ; he does not do much now. Eeflective organs 
very good ; when he comes to the studies which ex- 
ercise those faculties, he will be one of the brightest 
boys in the school.' This gave me courage, and I 
found it was really so. When I came to the studies 
which required thought, instead of mere memory, I 
went to the head of my class." 

When, therefore, I speak of self-knowledge, and 
of self-examination in order to self-knowledge, I do 
not mean merely the knowledge of our sins or our 
virtue. I do not mean a continual searching into our 
motives, and a constant picking to pieces of our own 
soul to see how it works. This sort of self-examina- 
tion may be carried a great deal too far. Most 
books of piety and morality make that mistake. 
They inculcate a self-scrutiny which is fatal to 
healthy moral life. To watch one's soul all the 
time, seeking for moral disease, is as bad as to search 
one's body all the time, seeking for physical disease. 
We know what that leads to. It produces hypo- 
chondria. A man comes to fancy that he has every 
possible malady he is looking for. Every part of 
the body, in turn, becomes the seat of pain ; the 
head seems about to burst ; the heart about to stop ; 
and the symptoms which simulate all diseases ap- 
pear. These hypochondriacs are the torments of their 
physicians, and think they are insulted if their com- 
plaints are called imaginary. There is a spiritual 
7 



98 SELF-CULTURE. 

hypochondria of the same kind. A man who is 
searching his motives to find how much sin and sel- 
fishness there is in him, will find a great deal. He 
torments himself with all sorts of fears ; he is 
afraid he has no piety, no genuine charity ; that his 
prayers are false, his repentance insincere ; he 
thinks he has blasphemed the Holy Ghost, and com- 
mitted the unpardonable sin; and if his spiritual 
adviser denies this, he thinks himself being misled, 
and very badly treated. One danger of the Eoman 
Catholic confessional is the tendency to produce this 
disease, and sometimes the opposite state of spir- 
itual pride and self-deception. Blanco White says 
that in the Spanish nunneries this spiritual disease is 
very common, and even has received a special name. 
It is called Los Escrwpelos, the " Scruples." The phy- 
sician who has a hypochondriac patient, and the 
Roman Catholic confessor who has one of these self- 
tormentors in his confessional, are equally to be 
pitied. 

By self-examination I mean something different. 
I do not mean this sort of daily self-inspection 
which tends to egotism and which freezes the heart. 
You must not keep pulling up the seeds to see if 
they are growing. If you do this, you kill them. 
The tree is known by its fruits, not by its roots, nor 
yet by a chemical analysis of its sap and fibre. 
When, the great ocean steamer is battling with the 
Atlantic, they do not put out the fires every day in 
order to examine the boilers. They give them one 



SELF-KNOWLEDGE. 99 

careful examination in port. AVhen at sea, if the 
engine works well, and the steam-gauge tells the 
proper story, they conclude that all is right. 

I do not believe in any minute self-scrutiny. I 
believe in a general self-examination, once for all, 
or once in a great while, and then in looking to see 
whether the engine is doing its work ; in daily self- 
examination, not of the motives, but of the conduct, 
of the actual life. Do not look within, to see 
whether you have sinned against the Holy Ghost, or 
whether your feelings are right ; but look without, 
to see what you are doing for others ; what you are 
saying ; what your temper and spirit are to those 
about you. If the engine is looking well, and the 
vessel is running, you may assume that the boilers 
are. in good order. Look up, also, for higher light, 
and for more life. 

But we need a certain general knowledge of hu- 
man nature in order to gain a special self-knowledge. 
To know what our particular capacity is, what our 
special defects are, we need some systematic knowl- 
edge of the soul. It is true that, without any such 
system of psychology, we get a knowledge of hu- 
man nature from life. "We also learn a great deal 
about mankind from history, biography, the drama, 
poetry, novels. Probably these teach us more, and 
more truly, on the whole, than any system of moral 
or mental philosophy. A play of Shakspeare's, or a 
novel by Dickens, shows us human beings in action ; 
human faculties at work and alive : metaphysics 



100 SELF-CULTURE. 

shows them inactive, and taken apart. The one is 
like the study of muscles in an anatomical museum ; 
the other, like studying them in a gymnasium. But 
I think that, as, in order to know the body, we must 
see it in both ways ; so, in order to know the soul, 
we must not only read history and poetry and see 
actual life, but it is also desirable to have some 
methodized system of human nature ; for only thus 
can we be prevented from being one-sided; from 
laying too much stress on some qualities, too little on 
others. We ought to have a knowledge of the whole 
soul while studying its separate faculties. 

And of all systematic divisions of human nature 
into faculties and powers, I think that of phrenology, 
on the whole, the most convenient, merely as the 
basis of self-examination. I think so for several 
reasons ; first, because it is founded on actual obser- 
vations of life, and therefore is true in the main. I 
am not now speaking of craniology, or the shape of 
the head, but of phrenology, or the arrangement of 
human powers. I like it, though it does not give 
us the depths and heights of human nature. But it 
presents a good sketch, for working purposes, of the 
various powers of the human soul. It has nothing 
to say of the soul itself ; it only speaks of its or- 
gans, its faculties, its tools. It has nothing to say 
of freedom ; that is assumed, or not, as you will. 
The phrenological arrangement of human faculties 
leaves all these questions just where they were, 
neither asserting nor denying anything in regard to 
them. 



SELF-KNO WLEDGE. 101 

I recommend the phrenological arrangement of 
human powers simply as a convenient one in self- 
study. If a man wishes to know what he is fit for 
and capable of, this gives him a useful method of 
investigation. It divides, for example, all our pow- 
ers into mental, moral, and passional, — intellect, 
morals, and affections. To the intellectual region 
"belong, first, the perceptive faculties, by which we 
take notice of outward objects ; observe their size, 
form, weight, and color. Then the reasoning powers, 
by which we compare objects to see if they are 
alike or unlike, if they are cause and effect, if they 
are congruous or incongruous. Then there is the 
imagination, which makes a picture of the whole 
while examining the parts. Then, again, come the 
moral qualities, — sympathy, reverence, conscience, 
firmness. Then follow the passional and energetic 
powers, which supply movement and force, as self- 
reliance, the desire of approbation, the desire for 
home, the love of family and friends, the passion for 
battling with difficulties, the passion for destroying- 
evils, the passion for collecting property in all its 
forms, the desire of construction, which is the basis 
of all art. Now, this may be, or may not be, the 
best classification of human powers ; but it is, at 
least, a nearly exhaustive classification. Add, as 
the basis of it, the soul itself, and its freedom, which 
is the essence of the soul, and this classification 
shows well enough what our faculties and powers 
are. 



102 SELF-CUL TURE. 

One advantage of this classification is that it- 
helps us to make very useful distinctions in self- 
study. For instance, the old mental philosophy 
recognized only one kind of memory. A person had 
a good memory, or a bad one. Now, we know that 
there are a great many different kinds of memory. 
One person remembers names, but forgets faces; 
another easily remembers lines of poetry, but not 
prose ; another recollects single facts and dates with 
remarkable tenacity, but has little memory for 
causes, reasons, or arguments. I, myself, can re- 
member ten thousand lines of poetry, but, though I 
have lived in Boston since I was a little boy, I can- 
not describe the looks and size of the buildings on 
Washington Street, between Milk Street and State 
Street. And yet I can give you a general picture of 
any city in Europe which I may have seen during 
only a few days. Phrenology explains all this by 
teaching us that every organ has its own memory. 
A large organ of time remembers time. A person 
who has a great deal of this can often tell what 
o'clock it is without a watch ; a large organ of tune 
remembers music; a large organ of language re- 
members names; a large organ of configuration 
remembers faces and forms ; a large organ of imag- 
ination remembers the general aspect of a country, 
of a story, of a face. 

One advantage of this system is that it shows us 
how every power has its use and its abuse : how 
God has made everything in us good, but that we 



SELF-KNOWLEDGE. 103 

can abuse everything by excess. It also shows how 
one faculty may correct the excesses of another, or 
supply its deficiencies. Thus what the phrenologist 
calls the organs of combativeness and destructive- 
ness are most important and valuable in their proper 
sphere. They help us to wage the battle of life, to 
conquer difficulties, to meet opposition, to resist and 
destroy evil and wrong ; in short, to fight the good 
fight, and finish the work given us to do. No man 
can be an eminent philanthropist or a martyr with- 
out them. But they can easily be carried to excess, 
or exercised in a wrong direction. Then they make 
us quarrelsome, controversial, satirical, vindictive, 
lashing others with tongue or pen, and striking 
them with the dagger of sharp, poisonous, bitter, 
unkind words. They make termagants and scolds, 
fault-finders and Papal inquisitors. On the other 
hand, the best moral tendencies may be excessive, 
or misdirected. The lovely power of sympathy, 
which causes so much happiness, which makes men 
enter into the feelings of others, rejoice with those 
who rejoice, and weep with those who weep ; which 
constitutes so much of the sweetness and comfort of 
life ; this, also, may be excessive or one-sided. Then 
it makes persons weak and false, yielding to the 
present influence, loving the person who is near, 
forgetting the one who is absent, neglecting past 
promises, and so tending to insincerity. Therefore 
this tendency needs to be restrained by firmness, 
self-esteem, and conscientiousness. But these, in 



104 SELF- CUL TURB. 

turn, though good, are also easily carried to excess. 
Self-esteem produces self-reliance, which is one of 
the most essential features of character. Without 
it, character can hardly exist. It is the organ of 
sincerity, of independence, of personality. Yet it 
tends to dogmatism, to egotism, to assumption of 
superiority, to overbearing manners, forgetting the 
claims of others ; and it makes the character hard 
and cold. Even the conscience may he diseased. 
Conscience may be too irritable, or too scrupulous ; 
it may be always tormenting the soul with questions 
about imaginary sins ; it may make us so afraid of 
doing wrong that we shall never do anything right. 
Firmness may become obstinacy ; the love of order 
may grow into pedantry; the love of home take 
one away from social and public duties. Even rev- 
erence may become a fault. It is the crown of the 
whole moral nature, and has been therefore fitly 
found by phrenologists on the summit of the head. 
It produces that beautiful modesty which, when 
accompanying manliness, is so charming ; it creates 
that respect for all that is above us, which lifts the 
soul; it is the great incentive to nobleness; it is 
the power which enables us to rise above ourselves 
in the worship of goodness, whether human or 
divine. Shakspeare calls it "that angel of the 
world;" Goethe calls it "the crown of the whole 
moral nature." It is the power of moral harmony ; 
which makes a concord of all discordant things, by 
opening the soul to the highest and best of all. 



SELF-KNOWLEDGE. 105 

And yet even this great and wonderful power may- 
be abused. It may, if not enlightened by reason 
and truth, lead to gross superstitions and worship of 
the letter and the form. It may become idolatry. 
It is essentially the religious organ, but it leads, 
when unenlightened and unregulated, to the worst 
abuses. All the cruelties practised in the name of 
religion have been the results of an unenlightened 
reverence. If we reverence a being as God whom 
we believe wilful, cruel, unjust, or partial, then 
our reverence tends to make us, also, wilful, cruel, 
and partial. The special abuse of reverence is idol- 
atry, which is worshipping the letter instead of the 
spirit. To worship a form, a name, a letter, instead 
of the spirit, hurts the soul. To worship the letter 
of a creed, of a church, of the Bible, injures the 
spirit. That is why the Apostle declares that " the 
letter killeth." 

The great advantage of any self-study which 
shows us what are our special organic defects and 
corresponding gifts and powers, is that it makes us 
both humble and hopeful. Self-conceit comes from 
a vague imagination of possessing some great genius 
or superiority ; and not from any actual, precise 
knowledge of what we are. Actual knowledge of 
one's self will always show us that some temptation 
besets every success ; that some opportunity comes 
with every failure ; that our weaknesses have a 
strength hidden in them ; that our strength has also 
its weak side. " Every one," says the French prov- 



106 SELF-CULTURE. 

erb, " has the defects of his qualities ; " every one, 
also, has the qualities of his defects. " Our virtues 
and vices," says a great thinker, " grow out of the 
same roots." And does not Jesus intimate as much 
in that parable which teaches that, in trying to pull 
up the tares, we may run the risk of pulling up the 
wheat, too ? That is the risk which those run who 
try to root out and destroy every natural tendency 
in man, because of the abuses which it occasions. 
Christ, who did not come to destroy anything, but 
to fulfil everything, said, " Let both grow together 
till the harvest." We cannot always root out an 
evil tendency ; but we can often grow it out. Give 
more life, more growth, more sun and rain, more 
truth and love, — these powers of growth will con- 
quer the evils in the soul and in the heart. 

These considerations, as I have said, make us both 
humble and hopeful. We are humble in thinking 
that our best success and our highest gifts have their 
danger. We are hopeful when we see that even the 
worst thing in us can be turned to good. So God, 
in his great geological workshops, makes diamonds 
out of carbon and rubies out of clay. Man's brain 
is a self-compensating machine, an automatic, self- 
correcting apparatus. God has set in it two against 
two; every power has its antagonist power. He 
has placed in man a tendency to hope, and another 
to caution, as its counterweight. He has given self- 
reliance, and also sympathy; he has inspired the 
wish to battle with wrong and evil ; he has added 



SELF-KNOWLEDGE. 107 

the tendency to reverence and submit to good. He 
has given us powers which take us outward into the 
world of things and men ; others which draw us 
inward to the world of imagination and reflection. 

But man is not a mere machine, nor is organiza- 
tion the whole. The body, after all, is only the 
chest of tools which the soul uses. And just as one 
man with a jack-knife can do more than another 
with a whole box of tools, so we see some men of 
comparatively small natural powers accomplish 
more in the course of life than others of great genius, 
who have neglected their gifts or abused them. The 
power which modifies all organization, and lifts us 
above the control of matter and structure, is the 
power of conviction, of a living faith in truth. Self- 
knowledge is an immense help in progress, but it is 
a small thing compared with the knowledge of God, 
truth, duty, and goodness. In the history of the 
world we have seen the most richly endowed nations 
sleep on, undeveloped and inactive, through long 
centuries, and then, inspired by some great convic- 
tion, flame up into magnanimities and heroisms 
without example. So it was with the Arabs in the 
time of Mohammed ; with the Greeks in the age of 
Miltiades and Pericles. So, in biography, we find 
vast results proceeding from the soul of some man 
not very greatly endowed, not very richly organized, 
but who has been fired by a sublime conviction. 
The founders of religions, the movers of reformations, 
have usually been men with some special organic 



108 SELF-CULTURE. 

gifts, indeed, but, more than that, men magnetized 
by a deep conviction. 

I recollect that once, when I lived in the West, 
there came a phrenologist to the town and examined 
the heads of all the clergymen in the place, and 
found us all deficient in the organ of reverence. 
More than that, we all admitted that the fact was 
so; that we were not, any of us, specially gifted 
with natural piety or love for worship. Then he 
said, "You have all mistaken your calling. You 
ought not to have been ministers." But I, for one, 
protested against that sentence, for I knew that, 
though I had no natural tendency to worship or 
pray, I had come by experience to know that I 
could not live well without prayer. Though I did 
not pray from sentiment, and feeling, I was able to 
pray from conviction and faith. 

The sight of truth is the necessary supplement to 
the power of structure. Without the sight of truth, 
man is the slave of his organization. Study his 
head, and you can. perhaps, tell what he may be. 
But, endowed with truth, he is the master of his 
organization ; he makes it serve him. He is able to 
see what are its defects, and supply them. If he 
finds himself too hopeful, he studies to supplement 
his hope by a greater caution ; if he sees that he is 
too timid, he encourages himself to do his work 
more bravely. If his sympathy runs away with 
him, he meets this by educating his self-reliance. 
If his imagination is too active, he supplies the 
fault by a habit of increased reflection, and by more 



SELF-KNOWLEDGE. 109 

devoted attention to facts. He is thus like the man 
who steers a ship, with the compass before his eyes, 
showing which way the vessel is moving ; with the 
chart in the cabin, telling which way it ought to go ; 
with the helm in his hand, enabling him to turn it 
to the right or left as need requires. But the mighty 
winds of divine truth coming from above ; the 
mighty fires within, of a divinely-gifted organiza- 
tion, — these supply the motive-power; and what 
he has to do is to keep the course in his mind, and 
to keep the compass in his eye, and to keep his 
hand on the helm, always steering the ship in the 
right direction. 

This is human freedom, and these are its limita- 
tions. We are not free to become anything we 
choose, or to do anything we wish. We are limited 
outwardly by circumstances, inwardly by our own 
organic tendencies. But, if we have any sure con- 
victions of what is true, right, and good, we can 
steer that way. We can study our complex nature, 
and when we come to know it, we can encourage 
and cultivate what is best, discourage what is likely 
to lead us astray. We cannot make circumstances, 
but we can select those which are favorable. We 
can make use of the power of habit to fix and so- 
lidify all our good qualities. And, above all, if we 
believe in an ever-present God, and a divine influence 
from him, we can trust ourselves to his care, and open 
our hearts to his inspiration, and so be lifted up into 
the serene atmosphere of peace and purity, away from 
whatever is dangerous to the soul. 



V. 



EDUCATION OF THE POWERS OF 
OBSERVATION. 



V. 

EDUCATION OF THE POWERS OF 
OBSERVATION. 



I HAVE to speak next of the perceptive organs, 
— the faculties of observation in man, — and 
their education. 

The immense importance of these faculties appears 
from the fact that by means of these, and of these 
alone, the soul comes in contact with this whole 
external universe of God. 

I am not now merely speaking of the bodily senses, 
— the eye, the ear, the smell, the touch, the taste. 
Behind these senses are the organs which use them ; 
and behind these, the soul itself, with its faculties. 
We must not confound the organs of observation 
with the senses, for then we limit the power of their 
education. Perhaps the eye and ear ■•• cannot be 
trained to very much greater quickness and power, 
but the faculties which use the eye and ear certainly 
can. 

Hitherto we have neglected too much the educa- 
tion of the faculties of observation. Yet the power 
of noticing and remembering the outward phenomena 

8 



114 SELF-CULTURE. 

of the world is one which may be very highly edu- 
cated. The North American Indian had no better 
eyes than the white man; but he had trained his 
powers of observation in a certain direction, till no 
sign of the woods escaped him. A turned leaf, a 
broken twig, the faintest film of smoke against the 
sky, betrayed to him the passage or presence of an 
enemy. But the white man readily learned this 
art, and the hunters of Kentucky were soon able to 
match the Indian in his knowledge of the signs of 
the wilderness. 

In-door life and mechanical inventions dull the 
powers of observation. Instead of noticing the shad- 
dows of the trees to find the hour, we look at the 
clock ; instead of observing the movement of the sun 
to and from the north for the seasons, we examine 
the almanac ; instead of looking at the movements 
of the clouds for the weather and winds, we look at 
the barometer, and examine the Probabilities in the 
newspaper. With all our book knowledge, our school 
culture, we are conscious of a certain inferiority 
when we meet a man taught by Nature, — one who 
knows the woods, the birds and beasts ; one who can 
help himself when lost in the forest or overtaken by 
tempests. A gentleman once told me that he went 
to visit his brother, who had long lived in Texas. 
His brother introduced him to an old settler, rough 
and ready, who looked at him, and said, in a friendly 
way, "You'll learn something by and by; your 
brother was very green when he first came here." 



THE POWERS OF OBSERVATION. 115 

We live too much in-doors. The out-door races 
— the Indians of America, the hunters of the West, 
the Arabs of Asia and Africa — have a more exhila- 
rating life than ours, because always in contact with 
air and sun. sky and plain. But we need not turn 
Arabs or Indians in order to commune with Nature. 
We can have all the blessings of a high civilization, 
and yet retain the health of body and mind which 
comes from being immersed in God's great world of 
external phenomena, if we will educate the powers 
of observation. 

We begin the mistake in our schools. There we 
teach chiefly words, seldom things. Even object- 
teaching, in the primary schools, which promised to 
supply this defect, has, in many places, relapsed into 
the teaching of words. I have seen object-teaching 
of this sort. The skeleton of a dog or cat is placed 
on a table. The teacher says, " This is a skeleton. 
What is this ? " Then the children repeat, " A skele- 
ton." The teacher touches the skull, and says, " This 
is a skull. What is this ? " Then the children repeat, 
' A skull." Now, it is true that the children here 
see an object, while its name is given them ; but 
what they learn is the name. They do not learn to 
observe. 

I know it is difficult, in a city, to teach the chil- 
dren of the schools to observe outward facts. Yet 
much may be done by museums, gardens, and green- 
houses, in which specimens of plants, minerals, and 
animals are arranged and classified, as in the great 



116 SELF-CULTURE. 

collections in Europe. And, in the country, why- 
should not the children be taught to make collections 
themselves of grasses, fungi, lichens, leaves, bark ; of 
the different stones and earth; to observe and describe 
insects, birds, fishes. I think a text-book might be 
prepared for the schools, which should contain de- 
scriptions of the Mineralogy, Flora and Fauna of 
New England ; that is, of all the common weeds, 
flowers, trees, birds, insects, animals, and the geolo- 
gical formations just around us here. Every child 
ought to know, first of all, the wonderful creations 
of God in the midst of which it lives. Think of the 
absurdity of spending so much time at school, and 
then of not knowing the difference between a beech 
and an oak, between a piece of quartz and a frag- 
ment of marble ! Yet such is the result, often, of 
our system of education, which devotes years to 
learning the names of towns in India and China, or 
the absurdities of English grammar, and not an hour 
to the common things which lie around us. 

It would seem from the study of the brain that 
man has distinct organs for observing individual 
facts and events, the shapes and forms of things, 
words and names, the pressure and resistance of 
objects, the progress of time, the tints of color, and 
melodies of sound. Each of these faculties can be 
trained and developed. By careful practice all can 
be greatly improved. The members of a family 
might agree to remember and relate every evening 
the events of the day, to describe the persons they 



THE POWERS OF OBSERVATION. 117 

have seen, to repeat the striking remarks they have 
heard, and to cultivate habits of careful observation. 
Drawing from memory faces and figures, making 
rapid sketches in walking or travelling of pictu- 
resque scenery, educate the organs of form. Drawing 
from memory outline maps, as practised in schools, 
does the same. By practice, a person can learn to 
tell the height or length of a room within a few 
inches ; the weight of an object held in the hand to 
within half an ounce. By practice, a list of a dozen 
or twenty names, heard a single time, can be remem- 
bered. Such accomplishments, once acquired, give 
pleasure in the exercise ; for this is a law of human 
nature, which causes what is once gained to be 
secured. Study which does not result in accom- 
plishment is bad, for we forget easily what does 
not root itself by means of useful attainments and 
skilled processes. One reason why a language is 
learned so rapidly in the country where it is spoken 
is this : that everything so learned is turned instantly 
to use, and becomes an accomplishment. If, in 
France, I learn to ask for a plate or a napkin, there 
is a certain pleasure in this, and I repeat it as an 
accomplishment, and so fix the knowledge. 

One of the best methods of educating the percep- 
tive powers is by the study of some science, as 
botany, geology, zoology, or some form of natural 
history. These ought to take us out of doors, put 
us in the fields and woods, show us Nature, open 
our eyes and awaken observation. The botanist 



118 SELF- CUL TURE. 

walks on, hour after hour, searching for some plant, 
till he detects its habitat by the side of a stream, or 
on the damp borders of a quiet lake. The ornithol- 
ogist steps with the light tread of an Indian over 
the rocks and leaves, following the whistle of a 
thrush or the cry of a cat-bird, till he detects the 
little lady, sitting in maiden meditation, fancy free, 
among the leaves, and watches her gentle movements 
till he comes to know her by heart. Then the stu- 
dent of geology walks over hill and plain, reading a 
great history of one hundred thousand years in the 
swell and roll of the meadow, in the rounded escarp- 
ment of rocks, in the long level of the plateaus. 

I rejoice much in the increasing interest in such 
studies. They bring us into loving relations with 
the great universe of God, that roaring loom of Time 
which forever weaves the garment of the Almighty, 
the garment by which he becomes visible. They 
educate those powers which half perceive and half 
create (as Wordsworth says) the world. One of my 
friends spent four months in a visit to Japan, and 
used such diligence as to bring back hundreds of 
specimens of curious living beings. Another friend, 
instead of passing his winter at dinner-parties and 
in clubs, goes to dredge in the Gulf of Mexico for 
the lower forms of life. One summer, at the sea- 
shore, I found a school of students, with their micro- 
scopes, diligently studying varieties of the sponge. 
And, last summer, sitting on our piazza in the even- 
ing, we were mystified by the appearance of a lantern, 



THE POWERS OF OBSERVATION. 119 

moving to and fro in a neighboring field, with uncon- 
firmed intent, till late at night. At last, we went 
to see what it could be, thinking the man was look- 
ing for something valuable which had been lost ; 
and, behold ! it was a naturalist catching night-moths. 
Now this new interest in all the lower forms of life 
is certainly a good thing. Since the Creator has not 
thought it beneath his dignity to make them, we 
must not consider it beneath ours to study them. 
Last night, we watched from our roof that lovely 
phenomenon, the approach of Venus to the moon, till 
a cloud received them out of our sight. Have we not 
reason to admire the goodness of God, who has given 
us power of observation, by which we can perceive 
the motions of these majestic luminaries, millions of 
miles away in the depths of space ; and, also, study 
the minute animalcules which pass their days in a 
spoonful of water, and, no doubt, enjoy that small 
existence in their way, as we do ours. 

A certain amount of out-of-door life is necessary 
to bodily health, and without bodily health how can 
we have mental vigor, moral purity, or spiritual 
peace ? What people think to be sin in themselves 
is often only disease, dyspepsia ; what we censure 
sharply in others, as a fault of temper, is only the 
want of fresh air. The minister recommends a girl 
or young man to spend certain hours in his closet at 
prayer, when what he really needs is to take a long 
walk in the country. It is difficult for a sick man 
to fulfil his social duties ; good health, therefore, lies 



120 SELF-CULTURE. 

at the basis of morals, manners, and religion. But 
the conditions of health are simple ; they depend on 
this prescription, composed of five parts, to be taken 
daily: (1) Sun; (2) air; (3) exercise; (4) plain, nour- 
ishing food ; (5) a contented mind. Given these five 
conditions, and if we are not well, neither patent 
medicines, nor those famous doctors who can only 
stay in Boston a few days longer, will avail us any- 
thing. 

But what is to take us out into the air and sun, 
and give us exercise, and the healthy appetite which 
enjoys plain food ? Only some attraction. We can- 
not be driven out from a sense of duty ; we must 
be drawn out by an interest in some out-of-doors 
pursuit. 

I knew a man in Brattleboro', a shoemaker by 
trade, who was rapidly going into consumption. His 
wise physician said to him : " Nothing will save 
you but to be out of doors six or eight hours every 
day. But you will never stay out of doors this 
length of time unless you have something to attract 
you, and that something must be some study. Choose 
some study, and pursue it." The man chose botany, 
and became familiar with all the plants of his region. 
In winter, he studied lichens and mosses, and he 
not only recovered his health, but became one of the 
first botanists in New England, and, as far as I could 
see, his business as a shoemaker went on as prosper- 
ously as before. 

This leads me to say that less time given to 



THE POWERS OF OBSERVATION. 121 

business would often enable us to do it more effect- 
ually. Men stupefy themselves by staying all day 
in their shops or counting-rooms. Every human 
being needs a change, and God has meant that a 
part of our life shall be spent out of doors, in ob- 
serving the magnificent world which he has created 
for us. 

Consider, also, the moral influence of the study of 
the natural sciences. Nature feeds the soul inwardly 
with content. She satisfies us with herself. Go 
into the fields and woods ; row your boat on the 
ocean, or the river, or lake ; spend a day in climbing 
a mountain ; pass a week in the wilderness, — and 
all cares seem to drift out of your mind and heart. 
What has become of all those anxieties about our 
life, about our success and failure ? What has be- 
come of our ambitions, our desire for social triumphs, 
our rivalries, our small vanities ? They have all 
been washed away by this bath of mountain air. 
That tall pine-tree, with its voice of silvery music, 
speaking to us as out of a period before the flood, 
has calmed our heart. We envy no one, we are 
jealous of no one, while we see that angry cardinal 
flower by the side of the brook. Or, when, by night, 
we watch the stars, and study the vast constella- 
tions ; when we see, through a telescope, the double- 
stars, purple and gold, shining like emeralds and 
rubies in the immense depths of the sky ; when we 
see the nebulae composed of a million solar sys- 
tems, but seeming like a soft cloud in the profound 



1 22 SELF-CUL TURE. 

abysses of space, — our anxieties, our heats, our fool- 
ish fears and fond desires pass out of us. What no 
moral training can do, this communion with God in 
his universe of Nature accomplishes. 

Last summer I met, in the middle of New York, a 
famous politician. To my surprise and pleasure, 
during the day or two which I passed in his com- 
pany he had no word to say about politics, but de- 
scribed with unfeigned joy his early experience in 
the Adirondack woods, where he spent winters in 
camp, sleeping in his blanket on the snow, and en- 
joying the winter forms of forest and mountain. 
No doubt he had collected there some of the force 
and facility which he afterward used in the affairs 
of state. I thought of what Mr. Emerson said in 
his first printed book : " The poet, the orator, bred 
in the woods, whose senses have been nourished by 
their fair and appeasing changes, year after year, 
without design or heed, shall not lose their lessons 
in the roar of cities and the broil of politics. Long 
hereafter, amid agitation and terror in national 
councils, these solemn images shall reappear in their 
morning lustre, as fit symbols for the language of 
the hour. At the call of a noble sentiment, again 
the woods wave, the pines murmur, the river rolls 
and shines, and the cattle low upon the mountains, 
putting the spells of persuasion, the keys of power, 
into his hands." 

There is also a religious side to our subject. God 
has set the members every one in the body as it has 



THE POWERS OF OBSERVATION. 123 

pleased him, — eye and ear, touch and taste and 
smell. He has given us faculties of observation, 
organs of perception, by which to observe his work 
in the world. He has also created for us this dome 
of heaven, these solemn fires of night, these drifting, 
changing clouds by day. He has made this earth so 
rich and so lovely, with its sights and sounds, its 
mountain precipices, its rolling prairies, its vast blue 
lakes, its tumbling cataracts, its ocean with long 
swell, rolling night and day on the shore, like the 
perpetual beating of the human heart. He has 
made the varieties of plants, leaves, flowers, trees ; 
the birds, fishes, insects. Since he has thought it fit 
to create this vast and wonderful world, shall we not 
think it worth our while to see it. Is there not an 
irreverence in this ? Will not the idolaters who 
worship the sun and moon and stars, seeing some- 
thing of God in his works, rise up and condemn us, 
who spend all our week-days in our shops, and go to 
church on Sunday for a sermon, but never lift up 
our eyes on high to see who has created all these 
things ? Wordsworth, in one of his finest sonnets, 
rebukes this neglect of Nature thus : — 

" The world is too much with us ; late and soon, 
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ! 
Little we see in Nature that is ours ; 
We have given our lives away, a sordid boon ! 
The sea, that bares her bosom to the moon, 
The winds, that will be howling at all hours, 
And are regathered now, like sleeping flowers ; 
For this, for everything, we are out of tune. 



124 SELF-CUL TURE. 

It moves us not. Great God ! I'd rather be 
A Pagan, suckled in a creed outworn ; 
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; 
Have sight of Proteus, rising from the sea ; 
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." 

But the powers of observation are educated by 
the study of art, as well as by the study of nature. 
Every child ought to learn to draw, as well as to 
read and write. Not in order to draw poor figures 
and bad landscapes, but in order to sketch easily 
and readily whatever object he sees and wishes to 
remember. The power of drawing in perspective, 
which can be acquired in a week, is a satisfaction 
during all one's life. Sketching picturesque objects 
— trees, forms, faces — leads to observation, culti- 
vates observation. Many of us go through the 
streets, and see hundreds of faces, and never notice 
them. Yet God has made each human face with its 
separate expression, its own story. In each one is 
written a prophecy of possibilities, a history of suc- 
cesses and failures. Are not these worth noticing ? 

I recollect, when I first saw portraits by the great 
masters, — an Ignatius Loyola, by Eubens ; a Gro- 
tius, by Eembrandt; and those tender and noble 
faces and forms by Vandyke, Titian, Sir Joshua 
Eeynolds, and Gainsborough, — I seemed not only to 
have found an art I never dreamed of, but also to 
have been introduced into a deeper knowledge of 
human nature. A face by Titian is like a character 
of Shakspeare, — it is so much added to humanity. 



THE POWERS OF OBSERVATION. 125 

You read in it a poem of the soul ; some large and 
generous purpose, or deep resolve ; or a struggle 
continued patiently, hopefully, against overwhelming 
obstacles. You look at those portraits and go away, 
and then wish to go back to study them again. 
There are faces in European galleries that rise before 
me now, like the features of a long-lost friend. But 
what is the secret of that skill, but that the artist 
saw — what we might, also, have seen and did not 
see — the hidden interior expression, the face behind 
the face, of the real man. If we cared enough for 
our fellow-creatures, we should look at them and 
see them as they really are. Every face, which now 
appears to us as commonplace and tame, would 
thus become profoundly interesting. In the hum- 
blest and poorest we might find some romance and 
some charm. To the person who knows how to 
look, the mask drops off, and the real man and 
woman appear. Love reads every secret in the 
changing expression of brow, lips, and eyes. Love 
watches the cloud, unapparent to others, which for 
a moment darkens the sunshine of the smile. If we 
loved our fellow-men we should notice them, and so 
humanity and sympathy would educate the powers 
of observation. 

Thus Christianity, which teaches us to love God 
with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to 
love our neighbor as ourselves, tends even to culti- 
vate the perceptive faculties. This benign influence, 
descending into the lowest details and crannies of 



126 SELF-CULTURE. 

human life, ennobling all nature, throwing a glory 
and a glow over all earthly interests, calling noth- 
ing common or unclean, will vitalize science, art, 
literature, the intercourse of man with man, and 
teach us how to take an interest even in reptiles, 
insects, and weeds, since these, also, are creatures 
of God. 

We have already mentioned how the ancient 
Egyptians, the most sharp-sighted of men for out- 
ward facts, looked with awe on the mystery of 
organic life. To them , there was something sacred 
in the growth of a plant out of a seed, and the 
strange forms and instincts of animals. In this they 
were surely wiser than we are, if we neglect to no- 
tice these mysteries of creation, and think it not 
worth while to look at those things which God has 
thought it worth while to place around us. " In 
wonder," says Coleridge, " all philosophy begins, and 
in wonder it ends." He who does not see, with 
admiring curiosity, how wonderful the world is, 
does not see the world at all. 

There is one remarkable physical power in man, 
the only one perhaps in which he excels all other 
animals. This is the balancing faculty, by which 
he is able to stand upright, though naturally top- 
heavy, — a faculty which manifests itself also in a 
variety of other applications. It is the sense of 
momentum, of equilibrium, of resistance. It oper- 
ates by means of the antagonist muscles, which re- 
strain each other, modulating all motion, preventing 



THE POWERS OF OBSERVATION. 127 

it from being jerky. Jerkiness in movement is awk- 
wardness ; modulated movements are graceful. This 
power modulates the voice in speaking or singing, 
making speech fluent and not abrupt. In writing or 
drawing it gives uniformity of pressure. In music 
it produces delicacy and precision of touch on the 
stringed instrument, and a measured pressure of air 
in the wind instrument. It is, therefore, a very im- 
portant faculty, and deserves to be carefully devel- 
oped. It is capable of being trained to a high 
degree of perfection, as we see in the case of rope- 
dancers, who will stand with one foot balanced on a 
single wire, and keep four or five plates in the air 
revolving on the points of as many sticks held in 
the hand. Mountain-climbers, sailors who lie out 
on the yard-arm when the vessel is rolling in a gale, 
slaters who walk on a sloping roof, — all have 
trained this faculty. Its education begins with the 
first attempt of a child to stand upright. This is a 
much more difficult operation than we usually sup- 
pose ; for man is so top-heavy in his structure 
that his centre of gravity is almost always outside 
of the base. A statue of a man standing on his feet 
could hardly be made which would not immediately 
topple over. It is evident, therefore, that we are 
always holding ourselves up when we are standing, 
though by an unconscious action of the will. 

The advantage of training this faculty is that it 
gives grace to all human actions. It modulates our 
walk, speech, and writing. The man who walks 



128 SELF-CULTURE. 

ungracefully throws his foot forward with a jerk ; 
while the graceful walker 'puts it forward with a 
restrained movement, which is not merely mechani- 
cal, but dynamical. The soul goes into every act to 
make grace. If one remembers this, and avoids all 
jerky movement, he will learn to walk gracefully. 
He will not pitch himself forward in walking, but 
go on with a balanced attitude of the body. It has 
often been remarked that those who carry weights 
on their heads acquire a graceful movement. The 
reason is that they are obliged to balance themselves 
at every step. Dancing has the same result. In 
our common conversation we can give pleasure 
and escape sharp tones, by avoiding jerkiness in 
speech. Such are some of the practical uses of this 
sense of equilibrium, a physical function which has 
hitherto been scarcely noticed. 

Let us, then, thank God for these powers of ob- 
servation, and employ them to his glory, by educating 
them to finer uses, and becoming better acquainted 
with his creation. 



VL 

THE EDUCATION OF THE RE. 
FLECTIVE POWERS. 



VI. 



THE EDUCATION OF THE REFLECT- 
IVE POWERS. 



MAN acquires knowledge in two ways, — by per- 
ception, or intuition ; by looking out through 
the senses, or looking in by his intuitions. By 
means of his perceptive organs he becomes ac- 
quainted with the external world ; he comes in con- 
tact with nature, society, history. By means of his 
intuitions he sees the truths of the eternal world, 
the laws of spiritual being, abstracted from phe- 
nomena. By the perceptive powers he comes in 
contact with the actual universe ; by the intuitive 
faculties he lays hold of the ideal universe. 

Knowledge, therefore, is acquired by these two 
methods ; knowledge of the external universe, by 
perception ; knowledge of the internal universe, by 
intuition. 

The reflective faculties have a different function to 
perform. They do not give us any new truth ; they 
give no knowledge. But they arrange, classify, sys- 
tematize, put in order, make accessible, the truth re- 
ceived through these other channels. They take the 



132 SELF-CULTURE. 

crude material and manufacture it, so that we not 
only have it, but possess it ; not only know it, but 
know that we know it, and are able to use it. 

We do our thinking by means of the reflective 
faculties. And the chief intellectual difference be- 
tween men is, that some think and others do not. 
Some men put their minds to all they do ; others, 
not. But thinking is hard work, perhaps the hard- 
est work that is done on the surface of the planet ; 
and by means of thinking all other work is accom- 
plished. Therefore, among all men, the thinkers are 
the laboring classes. Thought is the most practical 
and powerful of all the forces now acting on the 
globe, to modify its aspect. Civilization is another 
name for thinking. Civilized man is thinking man ; 
the uncivilized races are men perfect in body, in 
powers of perception, in muscular and vital force, in 
physical energy ; but they do not think. Thinking 
man has conquered nature. By thought, iron has 
been taken from the mine, and turned into every 
implement ; by thought, steam, a giant with a hun- 
dred arms, makes cloth, planes, bends and cuts 
metal, manufactures everything we need. It drives 
ships over the ocean and cars over the continent. 
Thought builds cities. Thought tells the lightning 
to run its errand ; and the lightning, an obedient 
fairy, puts a girdle round the earth in forty seconds. 
Thought tells the sun to paint its pictures ; and the 
sun, in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, photographs 
everything we wish to see. Thought weighs the 



THE REFLECTIVE POWERS. 133 

mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance ; 
takes for a measuring tape the distance between the 
earth and the sun, and with that line measures 
the enormous spaces which separate the sun from the 
stars. Thought takes the globe in pieces and sees 
how it was made ; unfolds it, leaf by leaf; reads how, 
hundreds of thousands of years ago, it was covered 
with an armor of ice ; how, before that, it was en- 
veloped in hot vapors. Thus thought shows us each 
act and scene of the mighty earth drama, and intro- 
duces one set of performers after another on the 
stage ; enormous saurian reptiles in one act, strange 
fishes and birds in another ; till, at last, man arrives 
" to close the drama with the day." 

When I heard Dr. Spiirzheim lecture on phren- 
ology, he taught us that there were two reflective 
organs in the forehead, and that all our thinking 
was done by the use of these two little convolutions 
in the front of the brain. One of these he called 
" comparison," and the other " causality." Next to 
" causality " he placed an organ which he called 
" mirthfulness." Not having looked into the sub- 
ject for some years, I do not know whether the 
present phrenologists retain the same location and 
nomenclature. But I remember being puzzled by 
finding this sense of mirth, which is a mere feel- 
ing, having its habitat by the side of the grave 
reflective faculties. This led me to examine the 
subject more narrowly, and I came to the following 
conclusion : There are not two organs merely of 



1 34 SELF-CUL TURE. 

reflection, but three. These are the powers by 
which, as we say, we " put this and that together." 
The organ of " comparison " has for its function to 
put things side by side, and examine them to see 
whether they are alike or unlike. It observes 
resemblances and differences ; it classifies and dis- 
tributes ; noticing fine resemblances it becomes wit. 
In literature, it gives rise to images and illustrations ; 
it colors style, it prevents vagueness, it detects the 
sophistry which puts one thing for another. This 
power of comparison gives definiteness and clear- 
ness to thought ; we never can understand anything 
well but by comparing it with something else. All 
sciences rest on this as their basis ; and we see 
the power of this faculty especially in the modern 
sciences of comparative philology, comparative geog- 
raphy, comparative theology, and the like. 

The second of the reflective powers in man, 
"causality," does not put the two facts side by 
side to see whether they agree ; but suspends one 
on the other, to see if it can be supported by it or 
not. When we perceive an event, we instinctively 
demand a cause. By a primitive law of the mind, 
we assume that nothing can take place without a 
reason. By this power we penetrate into nature 
and human life, discovering the hidden causes of all 
phenomena. As science rests on " comparison," 
which is the faculty of exact observation, and which 
gives us distinct phenomena, so it takes its sec- 
ond step by " causality," by which it discovers law. 



THE REFLECTIVE POWERS. 135 

For law in nature means the regular action of causes, 
producing always the same results. 

But now comes the third organ of reflection, 
which the early phrenologists, noticing only one of 
its outcomes, hastily called " mirthfulness." It 
ought rather to be named the faculty of " adapta- 
tion." It examines two phenomena, to see if they 
are adapted to each other, if they fit each other as 
the two parts of a common whole, if they are con- 
gruous or incongruous. As the sight of incongruity 
produces the sensation of mirth, this organ, unfor- 
tunately, was believed to have this for its function. 
But this form of its activity was not central. It is 
by this power that we both perceive and exercise 
design. It is the fashion, at present, to ignore final 
causes ; but this fashion must be temporary, for tele- 
ology is rooted in the very structure of the reason- 
ing intellect. The whole human race is occupied 
from morning till evening in adapting means to 
ends, arjd the power which discovers this adapta- 
tion is the third of the great reflective faculties in 
man. All inventions, and so all progress, arrives 
through this activity. 

All these reflective faculties are exercised in the 
common business of life, as well as in the highest 
actions of which man is capable. Applied to 
every-day concerns, they constitute what is called 
common sense, or practical wisdom. Let us take a 
very humble operation to illustrate this, — that of 
a cook preparing dinner. She must exercise her 



136 SELF-CULTURE. 

powers of perception with the organ of comparison 
in choosing her materials ; she applies the causal 
faculty in applying the processes of making dough, 
beating eggs, mixing ingredients, and in determining 
the amount and duration of heat. With this pro- 
cess the faculty of adaptation conjoins itself, mak- 
ing the congruities of the meal in its various parts 
and in its relation to the number and quality of the 
guests. The faculties do not the less act, because 
they act instinctively and unconsciously. Sound 
thinking consists in putting facts side by side to see 
if they are alike or different, to see if they depend 
on each other or are independent ; and to see if they 
are congruous or incongruous. 

In order to know the outward world, it is not 
enough to perceive, we must also reflect on what we 
perceive. The perceptive faculties, without the re- 
flective, do not give us knowledge, but only the mate- 
rial of knowledge. The sharpest pair of eyes, looking 
through a tropical forest, cannot see what is there, 
unless there be a thinking brain behind them. It 
sees a confused mass of trees, flowers, insects, birds, 
animals ; sees them, but brings away little knowl- 
edge about them. But the mind which has been 
taught to think, to compare, to distinguish, to ana- 
lyze, to generalize ; which has learned to classify 
its facts, and knows what to look for, — this can put 
each observation in its place, and bring away a store 
of knowledge. The same divine law applies every- 
where, " To him who hath, shall be given." He who 



THE REFLECTIVE POWERS. 137 

has studied, reflected, learned, and arranged his 
knowledge in system and order, is able to gather 
other stores of knowledge, and add them to those 
already acquired. In order to knowledge, therefore, 
reflection is indispensable. 

The reflective faculties, we see, are eminently 
practical. They are not so much for speculation as 
for life. Not even the simplest work can be well 
done without them. You send for a mechanic to 
do some work about your house. Suppose that he 
goes to work with his hands and not with his 
brains. He then pulls down your walls, tears up 
your floor, and finds, at last, that he has done it for 
nothing, — he ought to have done something else. 
Another man comes, and before doing anything he 
stops and thinks. He looks, and then reflects ; he 
tries carefully an experiment, and watches the re- 
sult. He finds, at last, the cause of the difficulty, 
and immediately proceeds to remove it. That is 
the chief difference in all working-men ; some put 
their brains into what they do, others do not. It is 
so with woman's work, too ; with sewing, house- 
keeping, cooking. How invaluable is thought in all 
this, and, alas ! how rare. That is why we say, let 
boys and girls in our schools be taught to think ; let 
them not be drilled so much in remembering as in 
reflecting ; lay more stress on processes than on 
results. 

There is an objection often urged against these 
higher reflective faculties in their exercise for 



138 SELF-CULTURE. 

common objects, — that they give theoretical rules 
which are not practical. Thus, if one not actu- 
ally engaged in teaching suggests any new view 
intended to improve the processes of education, he 
is apt to be told that this is not " practical." It is 
sometimes even assumed that theory and practice 
are opposed to each other. We often hear it as- 
serted that a notion may be " true in theory but 
false in practice ; " that is, useless for practical pur- 
poses. I, for one, esteem practice. I trace all real 
knowledge to experience. I care for no theories, no 
systems, no generalizations, which do not spring 
from life and return to it again. I feel perhaps 
undue contempt for the vague abstractions we often 
listen to, idle figments of an idle brain, speculations 
with no basis of sharp observation beneath them. 
Yet we are in danger of going too far in this direc- 
tion, and of undervaluing theory in its proper limits. 
People often eulogize practice when they only mean 
routine; boasting themselves as practical teachers, 
intending thereby that they only do what always 
has been done, and do not mean to do any better 
to-morrow than they did yesterday. Practice and 
theory must go together. Theory without practice 
to test it, to verify it, to correct it, is idle specula- 
tion ; but practice without theory to animate it is 
mere mechanism. In every art and business theory 
is the soul and practice the body. The soul without 
a body in which to dwell is indeed only a ghost, but 
the body without a soul is only a corpse. I some- 



THE REFLECTIVE POWERS. 139 

times pass a sign on which the artisan has painted, 
" John Smith " (or whatever the name may be), 
" Practical Plumber." I should not wish to employ 
him. When the water-works in my house get out 
of order, I want a theoretical plumber as well as one 
who is practical. I want a man who understands 
the theory of hydrostatic pressure ; who knows the 
laws giving resisting qualities to lead, iron, zinc, and 
copper; who can so arrange and plan beforehand 
the order of pipes that he shall accomplish the result 
aimed at with the smallest amount of piping, the 
least exposure to frost, the least danger of leakage 
or breakage ; and this a merely practical man, a man 
of routine, cannot do. The merest artisan needs 
to theorize, i. e. to think, — to think beforehand, to 
foresee ; and that must be done by the aid of general 
principles, by the knowledge of laws. An intelligent 
man, a man of general culture, whose mind has been 
quickened with ideas, will often be able to show a 
mechanic how to do his own work. When we are 
young, we have a superstitious faith in the knowl- 
edge each man is supposed to have of his own busi- 
ness. We outgrow this after a while. If you wish 
anything done about your house, send for a mechanic ; 
but overlook him, do not leave him to himself. You 
will presently find that you can suggest something 
to him in his own work which he has never thought 
of. All success depends on practice, but all im- 
provement on theory. Let neither despise the 
other. 



140 SELF-CULTURE. 

The saying that anything "is true in theory 
but false in practice" involves an impossibility. 
The theory indeed may be plausible, but false, and 
then it will not work : and its not working is the 

7 O 

proof of its being false. It is neither true in theory 
nor in practice. On the other hand, a theory which 
is true may not work at first, because the true way 
of working it has not been found out. It is not 
false, in practice, but practice has not come. All 
great inventions and discoveries have failed at first, 
but you cannot say they were " true in theory but 
false in practice." They had not been really put in 
practice. If anything is seen to be certainly true in 
theory it will come right by and by in practice. 
Fulton's steamboat would not work at first, nor did 
Stephenson's locomotive, nor Daguerre's sun-paint- 
ing, nor Morse's electric telegraph ; and no doubt a 
great many people said, " Oh ! that's true in theory 
but false in practice." 

Least of all should teachers undervalue theory; 
they whose whole art aims at guiding life by ideas, 
inspiring the soul with the love of truth, awakening 
the intellect by the sight of universal laws, and even 
while communicating the smallest details of knowl- 
edge, teaching them by the light of vital principles 
of wisdom. We cannot teach a little ragged boy 
his alphabet as we ought, unless we do it with 
the idea of his being an immortal soul, made for 
eternity ; and that is a theory. 

Practical men need outsiders to suggest improve- 



' THE REFLECTIVE POWERS. 141 

nients to them. We are all much benefited by lay 
criticism. There is lay criticism in all arts, and 
it is always needed. We saw in the civil war that 
merely military men were not always the most suc- 
cessful in military matters. Some of the graduates 
of West Point began by objecting to the volunteer 
soldiers and generals ; but they ended by being com- 
pelled to see that in war, as in all other things, it is 
good sense, devotion, and loyalty which succeed. 
Outsiders, laymen, can always benefit experts by 
suggestions, if in no other way. 

Let us not suppose, however, that the education 
of the reflective faculties consists in studying meta- 
physics, logic, or intellectual philosophy. These can, 
indeed, be learned so as to make the best possible 
display at a school exhibition, and yet no power of 
thinking may be acquired thereby. It is not by 
committing to memory descriptions of the reflective 
faculties that we learn to reflect ; it is by reflecting. 

We cannot obtain knowledge without reflection. 
Still less can we acquire wisdom. Wisdom is knowl- 
edge in its application to the exigencies of human 
life. Wisdom puts everything in its proper relations ; 
sees the due perspective of objects ; knows how to 
distinguish what is essential and non-essential, prim- 
ary and secondary. It judges each case by its own 
merits, not by any abstract rule. The wise phy- 
sician, for example, is not one who has a number of 
theories about diseases and their cures, which he 
applies to all cases. Bather, he is one who watches 



142 SELF-CULTURE. 

carefully the constitution and condition of his 
patient ; narrowly observes symptoms ; follows the 
indications of Nature ; notices everything, and re- 
flects on what he notices. The wise mother is one 
who carefully studies the character of her chil- 
dren ; who knows how to gain and keep their confi- 
dence ; who is their best friend, to whom they go for 
counsel. She is cautious, but not too cautious ; gives 
them liberty, but not too much of it ; watches them, 
but not too narrowly ; in short, observes, and then 
reflects. The wise statesman rises above party, con- 
quers his partialities and prejudices, takes a broad 
view of the state of his nation, and so steers the 
ship of state on its majestic voyage. The wise 
friend is he who sees both the good and evil of his 
friend ; does not become his blind admirer, but loves 
him with intelligence, and so helps him to correct 
his faults, and to put forth courageously his good 
powers. He is one who encourages all that is good 
in us, discourages all that is evil, gives us confidence 
in what is best, exalts our purposes, inspires us with 
a generous ambition, and so gives us faith in God, 
man, and ourselves. 

What a blessing in any family, community, neigh- 
borhood, is a person who has cultivated this large 
and genial wisdom ! If there is one who has trained 
his powers of thinking, who is able to apply his 
mind to any difficulty, how much good he can do 
by his counsel ! To him men resort in their emer- 
gencies, and he gently untangles for them the skein 



THE REFLECTIVE POWERS. 143 

of their life. By a large experience of the world, 
by a careful study of the particular case, by a habit 
of reflection, he is able to guide the poor, lost souls 
who have gone astray in the wilderness of life, and 
to set them again in the right way. 

There have always been some men and women 
who have possessed this wisdom of life in an eminent 
degree. The ancient Germans selected such wise 
women for their advisers in all grave national diffi- 
culties. The mind of man and that of woman acts 
differently in reflection. The man looks at the case 
in hand, judges it in its details, takes it to pieces, 
examines it part by part, and reasons out carefully 
the necessary remedy or relief. The woman's mind 
is more apt to work sympathetically ; she sees the 
case as a whole, and keeps it before her mind till 
there arrives a distinct conception of what the diffi- 
culty is, and how it can be relieved. Both methods 
are good. Where there is a long journey to go, the 
masculine method, step by step, is better. Where a 
judgment is needed at once, the feminine method is 
surest. The best method is that which we call 
common sense, — not because it is common, for it is 
rare, but because it needs no special discipline of 
school or college to develop it. It comes from the 
training of life, and all practical persons have it in 
a greater or less degree. 

One book of the Bible is devoted to the celebra- 
tion of this kind of wisdom ; that practical wisdom 
of life, in its form of prudence, which says, " Neither 



144 SELF-CULTURE. 

too little, nor too much." The Proverbs of Solomon, 
from first to last, glorify prudence. Their object is 
" to give subtilty to the simple, and to the young 
man knowledge and discretion." This book points 
out, graphically, the evils into which men fall who 
do not "consider their ways." "A fool," in this 
book, is the worst sort of man. Men are saved — 
this is the doctrine — by wisdom. " When wisdom 
entereth into thy heart, and knowledge is pleasant 
to thy soul, discretion shall preserve thee, under- 
standing shall keep thee. To deliver thee from the 
way of the evil man, whose ways are crooked; to 
deliver thee from the strange woman, whose house 
inclineth unto death. That thou mayest walk in 
the way of good men, for the upright shall dwell 
in the land." The result is temporal prosperity and 
inward satisfaction. " Length of days, and long life, 
and peace, shall they add to thee." " And thou shalt 
find favor and good understanding in the sight of 
God and man." " Honor the Lord with thy sub- 
stance, and thy barns shall be filled with plenty." 
Solomon urges obedience to parents. " My son, keep 
thy father's commandment, and forsake not the law 
of thy mother. Bind them continually upon thy 
heart, and tie them about thy neck." And, certainly, 
there is no surer safety from the extravagances of 
youth than this respect for the experience of parents. 
Honesty, chastity, cautiousness, carefulness in speech, 
consideration before action, — these are the gods of 
the Book of Proverbs. They are not the Most High 
God, but they are very important virtues. 



THE REFLECTIVE POWERS. 145 

One thing may be noticed in the Book of Proverbs. 
Its acuteness often becomes wit, and makes one smile. 
Thus, notice such sentences as these : " The legs of 
the lame are not equal ; so is a proverb in the mouth 
of fools." He does not see its application to him- 
self ; one side of the proverb limps. Again : " As a 
thorn in the hand of a drunkard, so is a proverb in 
the mouth of a fool." The drunkard does not feel 
the point of the thorn, nor the fool the point of the 
proverb. " Bray a fool in a mortar, his foolishness 
will not depart from him." That is, no amount of 
experience will teach a man who does not reflect. 
" A continual dropping in a rainy day and a con- 
tentious woman are alike." This outcrop of wit in 
the heart of the Bible suggests this remark : All the 
three reflective faculties have a mirthful side to 
them. They all put two things together to see their 
relations. Comparison puts them together to see if 
they are like or unlike. Now, the perception of 
fine resemblances and minute analogies constitute 
what we call wit. If you examine the sayings of 
Charles Lamb, Sydney Smith, and other great wits, 
you will perceive that what amuses you is the sud- 
den perception of some fine resemblance. Then the 
organ of causality, the second reflective organ, which 
puts two things together to see if one depends on 
the other or not, is the source of that somewhat 
egotistic and hard-hearted amusement which we 
take in sarcasm and satire. Causality is the organ 
of controversy and argument, and has always a light 
10 



146 SELF-CULTURE. 

sneer on its lips towards its opponent. It is almost 
impossible to carry on a controversy and treat your 
adversary with respect. It seems necessary to turn 
him into ridicule, and to prove his position not only 
false, but absurd. That is the evil of argument. 
"Knowledge puffs up," and no kind of knowledge 
more than formal knowledge, verbal accuracy, logical 
precision. When we prove another to have made a 
mistake in his statement, we are always tempted to 
exult over him. He may be right in the substance ; 
he may be essentially right ; but if he is verbally 
wrong, we decree ourselves a triumph, and look 
down on him with great self-complacency. The 
third reflective organ is that of system. It arranges, 
classifies, generalizes, sees the adaptations of part to 
part, sees that which is congruous. Its mirthful side 
is to see the incongruities, and this creates what we 
call humor. If a well-dressed man, who evidently 
prides himself on his perfect neatness of costume, 
suddenly slips in the street and falls into a mud 
puddle, men laugh. It is hard not to laugh, because 
of the incongruity between his satisfaction a moment 
before, and his utter confusion afterward. 

But not only virtue in its lower form of prudence, 
but in its higher aspects, depends on the culture of 
the reflective faculties. Our virtue is only secure, 
only safe, when it is rooted in convictions. Take an 
innocent boy, brought up in the country, taught to 
be good, good by habit, but not taught to think for 
himself, not taught to see the reason why he should 



THE REFLECTIVE POWERS. 147 

do right. As long as his surroundings encourage 
and support his virtue, he is virtuous. But now let 
him come to a city, far from his home ; let him enter 
a new society of gay and reckless young men ; let 
him hear his old opinions ridiculed as absurd, anti- 
quated, puritanical. His conscience, which had only 
been guided by the serious public opinion of his 
village into right doing, is now guided the other way 
by the new opinions which surround him. So he 
drifts into extravagance, intemperance, licentious- 
ness ; his former opinions were not rooted by thought, 
and so were not his opinions at all. 

Only by habitual reflection do our opinions, oui 
purposes, our sentiments, root themselves in the soul, 
and become convictions and principles. The frivolity, 
the superficial life which men satirize as frequent in 
women, is usually due to the absence of culture of 
their reflective powers in youth. Men first insist 
that women shall not pursue serious studies, but only 
external accomplishments, and then they condemn 
them for being so frivolous and empty. A woman 
may learn to think and to exercise her judgment 
without growing masculine, or becoming a pedant 
or a bookworm. If she does not learn to think, she 
necessarily drifts and floats on the surface of society, 
a pleasant object while she is young, pretty, and 
fascinating ; neglected, when she has lost these 
charms. 

The world can never become very much better 
without a greater exercise and culture of the reflect- 



148 SELF-CULTURE. 

ive powers. It requires some thinking to become 
very good. One may be conscientious, — his con- 
science may be sensitive, tender, active ; but if not 
guided by judgment it will often become bigotry, 
fanaticism, and cruelty. How much wrong is done, 
what harsh judgments uttered every day in the name 
of conscience ! Men think it their duty to treat with 
indiscriminate contempt those who differ from them 
in opinion. They think it their duty to be intoler- 
ant, relentless, and unforgiving. A large part of the 
misery of life comes from narrow and unenlightened 
conscientiousness. So, also, unreflective good-nature 
often does as much harm as good. Sympathizing 
persons with no judgment, hurt those they are trying 
to help. Blind sympathy turns poverty into pauper- 
ism by inconsiderate gifts. It weakens instead of 
strengthening those it tries to help. Instead of help- 
ing them to help themselves, it encourages them to 
lean for a time on others, and then, at last, is sure 
to tire of supporting them, and to withdraw its help, 
and so leaves them worse off than it found them. 

And, most of all, in religion are the exercise of 
the reflective organs needed ; and, most of all, in this 
highest sphere, have they remained unexercised. 
Men have been taught that it is wrong to think for 
themselves on religious subjects, because thought 
leads to doubt. The title for unbelief has been 
" Free-thinking," as if freedom to think must neces- 
sarily end in disbelief. But though free thought 
may sometimes, for a season, produce scepticism, it 



THE REFLECTIVE POWERS. 149 

must in the long run lead to the sight of truth. God, 
who has revealed truth, has given to us our reason 
with which to examine, investigate, define, and 
arrange it. The best and highest view of Christianity 
must come from the general exercise of reason in 
regard to it. 

We have been taught that there are mysteries in 
Christianity above human comprehension. So there 
are in nature. But it does not follow that the stu- 
dent of natural science must stop, and cease his 
investigations, because he meets with something 
mysterious. On the contrary, this excites him to 
more active thought. Mystery in nature stimulates 
inquiry ; why should it not do so in religion ? 

The truth is, that no form of Christianity will 
convert the world to Christ but rational Christianity. 
By this I do not mean the opinions of any existing 
sect or school, but I mean the Christianity which 
encourages thought and has no fear of inquiry ; 
which recognizes law as universal ; which does not 
ask for assent, but asks for conviction ; which does 
not claim submission to authority, but demands per- 
sonal faith. In all sects, in all churches, I see the 
advance of this rational Christianity. I hail its ap- 
proach as the surest proof of the triumph of Christ, 
and the coming of the kingdom of God. The name 
of the wicked woman in the book of Eevelation 
was " Mystery," and she was the mother of abomi- 
nations. But the name of Christianity is Light. 
Christ is " the Light of the world." Christians are 



150 SELF-CUL TURE. 

children of the light and of the day. Those who are 
true " come to the light," and only those who do evil 
hate the light. In the depths of Christianity, as in 
the depths of nature, are mysteries, secrets, problems. 
But when we find a secret in nature, we do not 
say, " This is an awful mystery ; let us humbly 
adore it, and not try to understand it." On the 
contrary, we accept it as a challenge to investiga- 
tion ; as a summons from the God of truth to the 
fullest inquiry. The God of nature is also the God 
of Eevelation, and in neither of these spheres does 
he ask for any blind acquiescence, or any torpid 
lethargy of thought, but for the fullest, freest exer- 
cise ot all our reflective powers. We must love God 
not only " with all our heart and soul and strength," 
but also " with all our mind and all our understand- 
ing." " Care is taken," says Goethe, " that trees shall 
not grow up to heaven," and there is not the least 
danger that we shall ever grow too knowing or too 
wise. 

You will observe that I have given no distinct 
directions for the culture of the reflective powers. 
I have all along implied that they are best devel- 
oped by practice. The right way to unfold thought 
is by thinking. The study of metaphysics has its 
use, but it does not necessarily train the thinking 
powers. But the habit of putting your mind to each 
question as it arises, and thinking it out, is the best 
discipline. Everything which exercises the reason- 
ing powers, whether it be the study of a science, a 



THE REFLECTIVE POWERS. 151 

debating society, a game of chess, or an intellectual 
game of questions and answers, helps to develop 
these faculties. Perhaps one of the best methods is 
to read books in which important questions are dis- 
cussed, and carefully to examine the reasons and 
arguments as you proceed ; not hurrying, but going 
very slowly, thinking out everything as you ad- 
vance. Conscientious work of all kinds requires 
reflection, and to do any piece of work conscien- 
tiously brings its reward in culture and strength of 
thought. No business, in which we deal with men 
or with things, can be rightfully conducted without 
thinking. But it is always hard work to think, and 
the tendency and danger is to take for granted, 
to assent without investigation, to believe as others 
believe, to drift with the stream. Nor is the inde- 
pendent thinker always agreeable to others ; for 
most men like those best whom they can easily 
bend to their will. 

The highest influence which comes to educate the 
power of thought is the serious and earnest love of 
truth. This alone enables us to conquer our indo- 
lence, to resist the tendency to conformity, to oppose 
public opinion and the fashion of the hour, and seek 
for what is real, looking for it with our own eyes. 
This is the heroic element in human nature, which 
makes those who possess it the salt of the earth and 
the light of the world. To awaken and cherish this 
love of truth in ourselves and in others, to follow 
after it as long as we live, this is what has created 



152 SELF-CULTURE. 

the prophets, saints, heroes, and martyrs of history ; 
and this is what, in private life, has purified souls, 
and made them the source of strength and light in 
the humble spheres of conscience and duty. This 
enthusiasm for truth makes the eye single, and so 
fills the whole body full of light. This is 

" The life of whate'er makes life worth living — 
Seed grain of high emprize, immortal food, 
One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving." 

Truth quickens the soul in all its faculties. This 
is one of the divine elements in human nature : the 
other is the divine element of love. The two belong 
together, and neither is fully itself without the help 
of the other. Truth spoken in love, truth acted in 
love, truth sought for lovingly, truth held lovingly, 
these make the complete man. 



VII. 

'THE INTUITIONAL NATURE. 



VII. 
THE INTUITIONAL NATURE. 



IPEOPOSE next to speak of the Intuitions of the 
Soul, and of that power in man which is capa- 
ble of perceiving ideas. 

Outward facts we perceive through the senses ; 
inward facts through insight, or higher intellect. 
There are many who adopt a sensational system, 
deriving all knowledge from sensible experience, 
and denying that the soul furnishes any part 
of our cognitions. Locke argued against innate 
ideas, and derived all our knowledge from sensation 
and reflection. But as reflection or reasoning fur- 
nishes no new intellectual matter, but merely orders 
and arranges what we possess, it follows that Locke 
was a sensationalist. It is not my intention to 
enter into any metaphysical discussion of this sub- 
ject. I shall merely endeavor to show, from plain 
and evident facts, which all can appreciate, that all 
our knowledge is not derived from sensation, but 
that some of it comes to us from the action of the 
mind itself. 



156 SELF-CULTURE. 

For example, take the idea of cause. I see a boy 
strike a ball with a bat, and the ball immediately 
flies through the air. I say that the blow by the 
bat was the cause of the motion of the ball. How 
did that belief come to me ? .Not through the senses, 
certainly. All I perceived with my eye was the 
phenomenon of the blow, followed by the motion of 
the ball ; two phenomena, one following the other. 
I saw no cause, I saw no force even, passing out of 
the bat into the ball. I only perceived succession, 
and I inferred causation by an act of reason. The 
idea of cause did not come from without, through 
the senses; it must, therefore, have come from 
within, through the reason itself. 

If it is said that a long observation of such facts, 
showing the invariable succession between impact 
and motion, gives us, at last, the idea of cause, I 
reply, first, that little children who have scarcely 
seen any phenomena have as lively a conviction of 
cause and effect as the adult man or woman. Little 
children, as soon as they can talk, begin to ask, 
"Who did that?" "Who made that?" And if 
you should tell them that the action did itself, or 
that the thing made itself, they would hardly be 
satisfied. 

But, beside, invariable succession is not the same 
thing as cause. We have seen, every year we have 
lived, night invariably succeed day, and day invari- 
ably succeed night ; but we have never believed one 
the cause of the other. Sleep invariably succeeds 



THE INTUITIONAL NATURE. 157 

wakefulness, wakefulness invariably succeeds sleep ; 
but no one thinks that sleep is caused by wakeful- 
ness, or wakefulness by sleep. Death succeeds life 
inevitably and invariably. Does any one suppose 
that life is the cause of death ? Invariable succes- 
sion is not, then, the same as cause and effect. 
When we perceive, by our senses, any phenomenon 
taking place, any event occurring, then immediately, 
by an inevitable act of the reason, we infer some 
cause. 

The idea of substance, in the same way, is given 
by the reason, though not by reasoning, and cannot 
be derived from sensation. I perceive some mate- 
rial substance, — a stone, for example, a tree, a book. 
I perceive by my eye only form and color, outline 
and shadow. I touch it with my hand ; I perceive 
resistance and extension. These are all sensations 
in my own mind. How do I know that there is 
some real substance outside of me in which these 
qualities inhere ? It is an inference of my reason, 
inevitable, necessary. When we perceive by the 
senses these material qualities, then, by a sponta- 
neous act of the reason, we infer a substance, or 
some thing standing under them. We infer cause 
and substance, however, not by the reflective powers, 
but by the intuitive reason. 

All men believe in infinite space and infinite time. 
We cannot conceive of space coming to an end 
anywhere. We cannot conceive of time beginning 
or ending, for then there would be a time when 



158 SELF-CUL TURE. 

there was no time. But certainly the senses cannot 
perceive the infinite. The senses only perceive what 
is finite and limited. Consequently, the idea of the 
infinite must come from the mind itself. We per- 
ceive finite space, and infer infinite space beyond it. 
"We observe the succession of minutes, days, years, 
and infer a past eternity behind, and a future eter- 
nity before. This, also, is a spontaneous and inevi- 
table act of the reason. 

Those ideas of the human mind which cannot be 
derived from sensation are intuitions of the reason. 
They do not come from reasoning, for they are the 
basis of all reasoning. They are first truths, without 
seeing which we could not see anything else. A 
piece of reasoning is like a suspended chain, in 
which link is joined to link by logical dependence. 
A weight hangs from the last link ; that link is sus- 
tained by the one above it, that by the next higher 
up. But, as we ascend the chain, we at last come, 
not to a link, but to a staple, which is driven into 
the wall. So all reasoning at last brings us to a 
first truth, a truth of intuition, which is a staple 
fastened into the very structure of the mind. All 
great thinkers have recognized these original and 
fundamental truths, the heritage of the soul itself, 
the birthright of man, which constitute him a 
rational being. These truths are self-evident, are 
believed naturally, necessarily and universally. 
They are incapable of demonstration. Proclus says, 
" He who thinks that all things can be demonstrated, 



THE INTUITIONAL NATURE. 159 

takes away demonstration itself." Epictetus says, 
"Whoever denies self-evident truths cannot be 
reasoned with ; he has no intellectual modesty." 
Aristotle, no less than Plato, asserted the existence 
of these first truths behind all reasoning. They are 
distinguished by two characters, — universality and 
necessity. If there is any idea which we find in all 
men, working either consciously or unconsciously, 
and which is so necessary that they cannot help 
having it even when they try not to have it, that 
idea is an intuition of the reason. 

If I am asked, then, what I mean by intuition, 
or the intuitional faculties, I reply that, beside the 
powers with which we look outward and perceive 
the external world, we have other powers, by which 
we look inward and observe another world of ideas. 
Locke fought stoutly against the doctrine of innate 
ideas, and justly. A man is certainly not born with 
ideas of the inward world, any more than he is born 
with ideas of the outward world. Both are devel- 
oped by means of experience. We have no innate 
idea of justice and goodness, any more than we have 
innate ideas of color, form, substance, and mathema- 
tical proportion. But just as there is an outward 
world which all men can recognize, so there is an 
inward world which all men can recognize. Just as 
all men, by experience, come to know weight, exten- 
sion, form, color, as realities in the external world, 
so all men, by experience, come to know justice, 
love, purity, as realities of the spiritual world. 



160 SELF-CULTURE. 

I have dwelt on these intellectual intuitions to 
show how solid and real is the knowledge which 
comes from looking in ; to prove that just as real 
as the outward world which we perceive by the 
senses is the inward world which we perceive 
through the soul itself. For as all our knowledge of 
intellectual realities rests on intuitions of the reason, 
so all our knowledge of goodness rests on intuitions 
of the moral nature, and all our knowledge of reli- 
gion on intuitions of the spiritual nature. The Apos- 
tle Paul says that spiritual things are spiritually 
discerned. Just as physical things are physically 
discerned through the senses, moral things are mor- 
ally discerned through the moral nature, and spirit- 
ual things are spiritually discerned through the 
religious nature. 

The intuitions above mentioned are intellectual, 
but another class are moral intuitions. There is a 
moral sense by which we perceive the distinction 
between good and bad, right and wrong, just as by 
the physical sense we perceive the distinction be- 
tween black and white. The idea of right and 
wrong is universal. There is no man so bad as not 
to recognize evil in another, if not in himself. All 
the world over, in all lands and all languages, men 
use the words " duty," "justice," " right," " wrong," 
"ought," "ought not." Everywhere there is found 
in man traces of conscience, rewarding him when he 
does what he believes to be right, punishing him with 
remorse when he does what he thinks to be wrong. 



THE INTUITIONAL NATURE. 161 

People differ as to what is right and what is 
wrong. The standard varies, the law differs. Yet 
there never has been a nation or race which did not 
approve courage, truth, generosity, honesty ; did not 
despise cowardice, falsehood, selfishness, dishonesty. 
A North American Indian, a Spanish inquisitor, a 
Southern slaveholder, or an absolute despot, will 
torture human beings from pleasure, from principle, 
or, as he thinks, from necessity ; but not one of 
them approves cruelty in the others, or in general. 
So men will lie, in business, for their religion, for 
their friends, for their own safety ; but no one ap- 
proves of lying in itself. Each man disapproves it 
in every one but himself, and in every case except 
his own case. 

In all souls there is this instinctive sense of right 
and wrong. If there were not, morality could not 
exist, and society would be impossible. For moral- 
ity is nothing if it is not respect for right and duty, 
apart from all rewards they may bring. A man who 
only does right because he is afraid of punishment 
if he does wrong, or because he hopes for some re- 
ward here or hereafter for doing right, does not act 
conscientiously at all ; he merely acts selfishly. 
Society is held together by conscience. See that 
laborer, uneducated, poor, who has been working 
ten hours a day since he was a child, and can only 
just support himself. What makes him indus- 
trious, temperate, honest, orderly, instead of being 
an idle wretch, ready for any crime ? Is it the fear 
11 



162 SELF-CULTURE. 

of the police and the prison ? No. The great mass 
of men support order and law, because they think it 
right to do so ; because conscience tells them to do 
so. A few scoundrels are kept from being too 
scoundrelly by the police and the prison ; the great 
mass of men never think of the police or prison, but 
do right because duty tells them to. It is an evil 
for a nation when conscience takes the side of rebel- 
lion, when law seems tyranny ! The deep corner- 
stone of republican institutions is faith in a universal 
conscience. You give all the power to the majority 
of the people. What is to prevent them from 
tyrannizing over you ? The majority are poor, only 
a minority are rich. What is to prevent them from 
voting themselves your houses and lands ? Nothing 
but conscience, the instinct of right. Now we have 
proved in this country that there are no institutions 
so stable as a democracy. In proving this, we have 
at the same time proved transcendentalism : that is, 
that all men have a conscience. 

Besides the intuitions of reason and those of the 
moral nature, there are also the religious intuitions. 
Man has the power of looking into the spiritual 
world, and of perceiving there God and immortality, 
divine beauty and infinite wisdom. 

We do not know God by argument, by reading 
books of evidences or books of theology : we know 
him just as we know the external world, — by expe- 
rience. We know God by intercourse with him, by 
looking up instead of down, by looking through the 



THE INTUITIONAL NATURE. 163 

wonders and beauties of nature to the infinite spirit 
beyond. 

"One impulse from the vernal wood 
Will teach us more of man, 
Of moral evil and of good, 
Than all the sages can." 

Sometimes we can learn more of God by a* walk 
in the woods or by the shore, than by all the argu- 
ments of theology. See the infinite tenderness of 
the lights and shadows on the leaves, the grass, the 
trunks of trees. Notice the soft tints on the clouds 
which drift over your head above. Hear the sighing 
of the winds, as they sing their everlasting song in 
the tree-tops. Sit on the rocks and see the perpetual 
rush and roar, the swell and heave, of the ocean. 
Then you say, " Lo ! God is here, and I knew it not ; 
this is none other than the house of God, and this 
the gate of heaven." 

We talk of inspired men, of men who walk with 
God, and see him face to face. These, however, are 
only more highly endowed with that power of in- 
tuition which we all possess. In every heart there 
is a door which opens inward to God. We leave it 
closed. We look out, and not in. So we lose half 
of our inheritance. 

Some men, we know, have more active perceptive 
powers than others. Some will notice outward things 
more easily ; observe faces, forms, events, with great 
facility. Others, in like manner, are born with more 
active intuitional powers than others ; they have a 



164 SELF-CULTURE. 

quicker sense of beauty, a more ready perception of 
right ; they are more shocked by injustice ; they are 
more elevated by the sight of goodness ; they have 
more ardor for truth. We take men with active per- 
ceptive powers as our guides in respect to outward 
things. They see what we cannot see in the out- 
ward nmiverse. But instead of taking the men of 
intuitions as our guides in the inward universe, we 
are very apt to call them sentimentalists and vision- 
aries. They are visionaries ; but the visions which 
come to them are of infinite truth, beauty, justice, 
of the great realities of the spiritual world. 

Woe to the land and time in which there are no 
such visionaries as these ! In such days moralists 
repeat by rote their old maxims ; preachers recite 
their lessons like school-boys : there are only con- 
ventional morals and manners, plants with no deep 
roots. Such a time is mentioned in the Old Testa- 
ment, " The word of the Lord was precious in those 
days ; there was no open vision." In such times the 
old formulas and creeds are idolized ; men cling to 
them as their only support. But in the midst of 
this dreary waste the Lord sends some new prophet, 
— some Socrates in Greece, some divine singers like 
Dante or Milton, some man of good sense like Dr. 
Johnson or Benjamin Franklin ; some teachers of 
religion who do not repeat by rote, but speak what 
they know and testify what they have seen, like 
Luther, George Fox, John Wesley, Swedenborg, 
Channing, Parker, Martineau, — and then it is like 



THE INTUITIONAL NATURE. 165 

a breath of fresh, air blowing in a stagnant miasma ; 
new life, love, hope, speedily comes in. All men 
feel this power ; all rejoice in it. 

This is the secret of the great influence exerted 
by such men as Channing in this country and 
Schleiermacher in Germany. They were both men 
of spiritual insight, men of intuitions, coming in the 
midst of a generation whose minds were saturated 
by the well-worn commonplaces of theology and 
morals. Men had been preaching from hearsay ; 
repeating over and over what their fathers and 
grandfathers had said before. But now there was 
another open vision of truth ; no wonder that it 
filled men with joy as they listened, and they said, 
" How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of 
those who publish glad tidings ! " 

Bunsen, in his work called "God in History," 
declares Dr. Channing to be one of the prophets of 
his time. Dr. Channing came at a day when religion 
had become very much diluted, had gone into the 
sphere of opinion, which consisted of cold and dry 
formulas. He caused a great revival of faith by 
looking with his own eyes at the truth. He was a 
man of a powerful intuitional nature. He saw ideas, 
and he saw them so plainly that he caused others to 
see them. He saw the better side of man ; saw the 
dignity of human nature - saw that God had made 
man little lower than tile angels ; saw, in spite of 
all the degradation and sin of man's actual condition, 
that he had divine and immortal capabilities, and 



166 SELF-CULTURE. 

was destined to a great future. Hence lie rejected, 
with the utmost horror, all doctrines of total deprav- 
ity and human inability which darkened this great 
idea. Hence he opposed human slavery, chiefly as 
a wrong done to the nature of man, turning man 
into a thing. 

It is not merely delight and joy which such men 
bring. They fasten anew to human hearts the chain 
of moral truths which bind us to eternity and God. 
They lay once more, deep and strong, the solid foun- 
dations on which the interests of society, morality, 
the worth of man, depend. These are the men 
who " speak with authority, and not as the scribes." 
These are the seers who help us to see. They help 
to make a new heaven and a new earth in which 
dwells righteousness. 

In some periods all spiritual truth seems to be 
lost or fading away. It is like the fatal time thus 
described : — 

" I dreamed a dream, last Christmas eve, 
Of a people whose God was Make-Believe, 
A dream of an old faith sunk to a guess, 
And a Christian church and people and press 
Who believed they believed it — more or less." 

In such doleful days as these God sends us men 
of intuitions, and then, all at once, the whole spirit- 
ual and moral world comes out fresh and fair, more 
real than aught beside. We see through their eyes, 
are nourished by their enthusiasm, our intuitional 
nature is awakened by theirs, and we, also, begin to 



THE INTUITIONAL NATURE. 167 

see that God is a living God, and that Christ is a 
living Saviour ; that beauty, holiness, virtue, honor, 
are not names, but things. 

We have had two such men of intuition in our 
times, — two men who have led the English thought 
back to that divine spring which flows fast by the 
oracles of God ; two men still living, — I mean 
Thomas Carlyle and our own Emerson. Their power 
over their age consists in their possessing in a 
high degree this capacity of intuition. They do not 
argue nor reason, but they simply say what they see. 
We may not agree at all with their conclusions. We 
may differ greatly from their doctrines. But we are 
willing for a season to rejoice in that light of which 
God has made them mediums, a light which reveals 
to us the vast inward realities of the world of con- 
science and faith. They do not, perhaps, con- 
sider themselves religious teachers, and are not so 
considered by others. Carlyle has become cynical 
in his later years, soured and harsh. But we cannot 
forget his early and better days, when he did not 
worship the God of Force, but the God of Justice, and 
when his soul brought inspiration to men, convincing 
them of the realities of an eternal and infinite world. 

There is an intuition of immortality, there is an 
organ of hope in the brain which perpetually looks 
forward. It is the instinct of the future. It teaches 
us that there is not less life for us after death, but 
more ; not less of power, knowledge, love, work, 
beauty, joy, but more. This belief in the future life 



168 SELF-CULTURE. 

does not rest on knowledge or argument, but on the 
habit of looking forward in faith and trust. Some 
have more of it, some less. It may be strengthened 
by exercise. "We may look at the dark side or the 
bright side of things, as we choose. We may look 
down or up, we may look at our sorrows and trials, 
or at our joys. All depends on this. By looking at 
the dark side, everything looks worse and worse; 
we lose the power of seeing good. We see only 
what is selfish, cold, and hard in men ; only what is 
dark and terrible in the universe. Seek and you 
shall find. You have what you look after. As a 
man sows, so shall he reap. A man may think that 
he believes in a future life because of the arguments 
in its favor; he may think that he disbelieves it 
because he has been convinced by the arguments 
against it. No. He believes it because he has 
established the habit of looking at the good side of 
things ; because he has exercised and educated his 
organs of faith and hope. He disbelieves it be- 
cause he has not exercised and educated them. 

There are prophets, seers, inspired souls, in all 
religions and in all nations. They are those in 
whom these intuitions of conscience, faith, hope, and 
love are strong. They are the men of intuition, 
who see through their inward eye, not their out- 
ward eye. They have not believed as every one 
else believed, but have looked into their own souls 
for truth, and have found it. They have seen God 
face to face, and he has talked with them, as a man 



THE INTUITIONAL NATURE. 169 

talks with a friend. In the darkness of night they 
have seen the approaching twilight and the rose of 
dawn, and have announced to all men the coming 
day. They hold up the heart of nations ; they come, 
in great emergencies, to add faith and fire to noble 
resolutions ; they suffer and die for their convic- 
tions, and so inspire others with a like resolution. 
These are the prophets who have been since the 
world began; the prophets, unrecognized in their 
own time, despised and rejected of men, but heralds 
of every great advance of the human race. Their 
power lies in the strength of their intuitions. They 
see God, truth, justice, and beauty as realities, not as 
probabilities. Inspired by these visions, they are 
ready to speak their word, whether men will hear 
or whether they will forbear. They die in obscu- 
rity, perhaps, and defeat ; but their lightest words 
live and conquer the world, and grow up into great 
trees, in which all the birds of the air find rest. 

But the gift of prophetic vision is not merely to 
make great teachers of the human race ; it is for 
practical daily life and common duty. Some men 
see only the outside of the world ; others see all 
that, and see, also, the ideas which rule the world. 
Those who are commonly called worldly wise are 
only half wise ; their wisdom has no roots and prin- 
ciples ; it grows from the shifting sands of tempo- 
rary expediency. But everywhere in society there 
are men who see, not only outward facts, but also 
ideas and truths. They see justice, goodness, hon- 



170 SELF-CUL TURE. 

esty, integrity as realities, not merely as conven- 
tional arrangements. These men are the only really 
moral and religious men in the land ; the only ones 
whose religion and virtue have roots. They would 
believe in truth if all mankind beside themselves 
disbelieved it ; they would do right if the universal 
custom was to do wrong. Such men and women, 
wherever they are, are the salt of the earth and the 
light of the world. 

The intuitional nature needs education, and can 
be educated, like the perceptive powers. We are 
helped to spiritual insight by communion with the 
souls whom God inspires to see realities. Their 
faith arouses ours. It is a true instinct which 
causes mankind to cleave to its prophets, poets, 
seers, and great moralists. Their life feeds the world. 
Men eat and drink them, and become spiritually 
alive themselves. 

But our intuitional nature is also educated, and 
that most efficiently, by obedience to our insights. 
The man who listens to the voice of conscience in 
his soul hears it afterward more distinctly. If he 
refuses to listen to it, his ear becomes dull to that 
divine melody. He who never looks up to a living 
God, to a heavenly presence, loses the power of 
perceiving that presence, and the universe slowly 
turns into a dead machine, clashing and grinding 
on, without purpose or end. If the light within us 
be darkness, how great is that darkness ! 

The best culture of the intuitive faculties consists 



THE INTUITIONAL NATURE. 171 

in using them. The same law applies to these as to 
all our other faculties, — use, improve or lose. A 
man who always looks down, never up, loses, at last, 
the power of looking up. A man who always looks 
out, never in, loses the power of looking in. We 
must look at the things not seen ; we must accus- 
tom ourselves to visions of infinite majesty, beauty, 
and truth. All in this life is not logic ; all is not 
sensation. There is a place in it for faith, hope, and 
love. 



VIII. 



THE IMAGINATION. 



vm. 

THE IMAGINATION. 



MANY persons think the imagination deserves 
rather to be repressed than to be cultivated. 
They regard it as dealing only with dreams, not re- 
alities, and so tending to unfit a person for actual 
life. Its realm they suppose to be the world of 
fairies, and of other impossibilities. At best, they 
will allow its use only to artists and poets, and they 
conceive its principal function to be the production 
of rather commonplace pictures and poems. 

But the imagination is one of the faculties which 
God has given to all men. It is a part of human 
nature, and was certainly put into us for some 
important purpose. My object now is to find what 
this purpose is, for what end the imagination was 
given, and how it is to be used ; what are its abuses, 
and what its dangers ; how it is to be cultivated, and 
how restrained. 

But first we must try to say what the imagination 
is. It is the ideal faculty, that which perceives 
ideals, and helps us to realize them. It is the 



176 SELF-CULTURE. 

power which makes a picture or image in the mind 
of something not perceived by the senses ; a type of 
something more perfect than the reality, and a type 
which is necessary for all work which requires skill 
and aims at excellence. It gives us a vision of the 
perfect in the midst of imperfection, of pure beauty 
amid what is rude and homely. 

The importance which the Creator attributes to 
the culture of the imagination appears from the 
great activity given to it in childhood. The plays 
of children all exercise and educate this power. A 
little girl playing with her doll, — what is she 
doing ? She imagines the doll to be alive, ima- 
gines herself to be its mother; she talks with it, 
feeds it, puts it to bed, dresses and undresses it ; in 
short, carries on a little drama, imagining herself 
and the doll to be the actors. See children at 
play ; everything is imaginary ; they put together 
chairs, and imagine them to be ships, or railroad 
cars, or houses, or forts. They imagine themselves 
into all the concerns of life ; they play at weddings, 
funerals, wars, trade. Thus the plays of children 
are endless imitation, and the constant exercise of 
the ideal faculty. 

And this is, all of it, a preparation for their work 
in life. For all work, to be done well, requires the 
use of this power. All work which is not mere 
routine and drudgery must be done with an ideal 
held before the mind, as a pattern. 

I therefore believe that the imagination is a very 



the imagination: 177 

practical, useful, and important faculty, given to all 
men, and necessary to all men ; and, moreover, that 
it is a faculty which can and ought to be educated. 

Without attempting to define the imagination, 
then, we can see what it is in its operation. As the 
object of the perceptive faculties are forms, colors, 
sounds, perfumes, or outward sensible phenomena ; 
as the object of the reflective faculties are the laws 
of likeness and unlikeness, cause and effect, adapta- 
tion and incongruity, — so the object of the imagi- 
nation is beauty. The senses perceive facts, the 
reason perceives laws, the imagination perceives the 
ideal or the perfect in all things, — physical, mental, 
moral, spiritual. 

We may also say that while, as an intellectual 
faculty, the imagination gives us the knowledge of 
the beautiful, so as a practical power it creates art. 
In its method it belongs to those high functions of 
the soul which tend to union, instead of division ; 
which do not see things scattered and separated, but 
harmonized and united. Thus the reason sees truth 
as one law binding all things together ; the moral 
nature sees one goodness uniting all souls in love ; 
and the imagination sees one perfect beauty pervad- 
ing nature and life. 

The work of the imagination, I said, is art. But 
art is simply doing a thing as well as it can be done; 
doing it according to an ideal in the soul ; having 
in the mind the image of the whole while working 
on the parts. There is no work which can be done 



178 SELF-CULTURE. 

well without a constant exercise of the imagination. 
A carpenter cannot build a house without keeping 
in his mind the idea of the whole house while 
working on the parts. A blacksmith can make a 
horseshoe only by the help of imagination, for he 
must hold in his mind the image of the horseshoe 
to guide him while hammering it out on the anvil 
from the rude bar of red-hot iron. Thus the com- 
monest labor may become a work of art. The 
common sense of mankind has put this into a 
proverb, — "Whatever is worth doing at all, is 
worth doing well." But you can do nothing well 
unless you have an ideal of how it ought to be 
done ; and this comes by the action of the imagina- 
tion. 

It is a mistake to suppose that, in order to be an 
artist, it is necessary to paint pictures, carve statues, 
build cathedrals, or write poems. Beauty is by no 
means confined to these objects ; wherever there is 
proportion, finish, harmony, thoroughness, unity, 
there is beauty. What more beautiful than a ship 
under sail ! What fine proportions, what exact sym- 
metry, in the moulding of the hull, in the rake of 
the masts, in the symmetry of the spars, in the 
drawing of the sails ! A splendid ship under sail is 
as beautiful as the Apollo Belvidere, and a great 
deal more beautiful than most of the statues with 
which we adorn our public grounds and public 
buildings. For a ship means something : it means 
the power which yields to the storm and sea, and so 



THE IMAGINATION. 179 

conquers them, and compels them to serve it ; which 
rides on the mighty billows, and shows the triumph 
of mind over matter. But most statues mean nothing 
at all. 

When the great Gothic cathedrals were built, no 
one thought of calling them works of art. Nor 
were the Greek temples built as works of art ; 
they were built for worship. The Gothic minsters, 
also, were built for worship, and their form came from 
a desire to carry out an ideal in the best way and at 
the smallest expense of materials. Their builders 
were no more thought artists than we consider a ship- 
builder one. Nor were Shakspeare's plays regarded 
as works of art by his contemporaries. They were 
delightful amusements for an afternoon, that was all 
But to build a ship, a cathedral, or a play, one must 
put his imagination into it ; have the image in his 
mind of what he wants to accomplish, and hold 
firmly to his ideal while he works out the details. 
The result is unity in variety, a harmonious whole ; 
in short, beauty. 

In dealing with men, imagination is a very prac- 
tical faculty, and very necessary. By imagination 
you enter into their state of mind ; see how they 
feel, what they think, and what they mean to do. 
For example, in war, the general must put himself 
in place of his enemy, and by force of imagination 
discover his plans. All great generals — Hannibal, 
the Duke of Marlborough, Napoleon — have had 
this gift in a high degree. 



180 SELF-CULTURE. 

All inventors and discoverers are obliged to use 
the imagination. They see their invention as an 
ideal and image long before they are able to put it 
in practice. This image is so luminous that it en- 
courages them to persevere, in spite of ridicule and 
repeated failure, and at last success comes. Few of 
the great modern inventions would have been made 
if man had been destitute of this faculty. 

All occupations, to be done well, require the con- 
stant use of the imagination. By means of it the 
physician puts himself into his patient's place, ima- 
gines how he feels, and so discovers what he needs. 
The lawyer puts himself into the place of his client, 
the judge, the jury, and the opposing counsel, and 
imagines, in turn, what each will think and feel. 
The orator puts himself in the place of his hearers, 
in order to move them. The merchant makes a 
picture in his mind of the world's needs, and puts 
himself in the place of his customer. Without 
imagination, social intercourse grows dry and hard, 
and human life is despoiled of charm. 

So, in science, the imagination foresees the law 
which is to bind the phenomena together long before 
it can be established by proofs. Kepler and New- 
ton had a vision of harmony in the heavens, of vast 
laws regulating the movements of the planets, years 
before they were able to demonstrate them. The 
imagination, in science, is John the Baptist prepar- 
ing the way for law, which is to come after. It also 
partakes of the nature of faith, and is the evidence 



THE IMAGINATION. 181 

of things not seen. The undiscovered invention, or 
law, which we are seeking, seems so beautiful in 
vision that we believe it must be found, and so per- 
severe till we find it. The ideal marches before the 
mind, a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, 
guiding us into the promised land. The imagina- 
tion is the prophetic soul which dreams of things to 
come, and is always making a new heaven and a 
new earth. 

It would be a great gain to theology if the inter- 
preters of the Scriptures had usually more imagina- 
tion, and were able to throw themselves into the 
state of the times, and make a picture of the con- 
dition of things. They are apt to explain the 
Scriptures by dictionary and grammar. But merely 
by the help of grammar and dictionary one cannot 
enter into the mind of Christ, or into that of Paul. 
How much mischief has been done by prosaic com- 
mentators interpreting texts in too literal a way ! 
If a teacher tells you that such and such a book will 
feed your mind, you know well enough what he 
means by help of your imagination. But when 
Jesus says, "You must eat me and drink me in 
order to get any life out of me," men have supposed 
he is to be literally eaten, and have burned and tor- 
tured thousands for doubting it. If you hear a man 
say, " There is no end to the evil which comes from 
such conduct," or if he says that " man's passions 
are a fire which nothing can put out," you simply 
suppose he means that the consequences are very 



182 SELF-CULTURE. 

grave and terrible. But when Jesus says that those 
who refuse to feed the hungry and clothe the naked 
will go into eternal punishment, and that their fire 
will never be quenched, the theologians, with dic- 
tionary and grammar, insist, perhaps too peremp- 
torily, that he must necessarily teach never-ending 
punishment hereafter. When an ambassador says, 
"If you show disrespect to me, it is showing dis- 
respect to my government," we do not understand 
him to say that he is the government. But when 
Jesus says that " all men must honor the Son even 
as they honor the Father," the dictionary and gram- 
mar theologians declare that this is the only legiti- 
mate inference. If a patriot says, " I can forgive 
you for ill-treating me, but I cannot forgive you 
for betraying my country ; that is an unpardonable 
sin," we do not hold him to the letter ; but we take 
Jesus literally when he says, " If you say anything 
against me it can be forgiven, but not if you are 
false to the spirit of truth in your own soul. 
That is an unpardonable sin in this world and 
every other world." This is why Paul says " The 
letter killeth." It has been remarked that nothing 
lies like a fact ; so, we may say, nothing is so false 
as the interpretation which sticks in the letter. 
We never can understand the Scripture until we 
give up the notion that Jesus is always in a pulpit 
preaching a sermon. He walked in the streets, and 
talked with common people in their own way ; 
and till we throw ourselves, by force of imagination, 



THE IMAGINATION. 183 

into the scenes and the time, we fail of seeing 
his truth. 

In morals, also, the imagination is very necessary. 
You cannot be just to another person if you merely 
observe what he says and does ; you must put your- 
self in his place, and see things from his point of 
view. Prosaic persons are often unjust, hard, cruel, 
unforgiving, simply from this defect. They cannot 
identify themselves with the offender so as to under- 
stand the force of circumstances and the power of 
the temptation. They only see what is done, not 
what is resisted. To sympathize with a person who 
is different from yourself requires an act of the 
imagination. You must " put yourself in his place;" 
then you feel with him, and so can feel for him. A 
great deal of the selfishness of the world comes not 
from bad hearts, but from languid imaginations. 

The imagination is not only a moral, but a religious 
faculty. God is revealed not only by the prophets 
who teach his truth, but by the universe which 
shows him in its beauty. We do not see God as we 
ought, if we only see him in the Bible and not in 
nature. God has filled the world with beauty to 
overflowing, — superabounding beauty. He has 
manifested himself in suns and storms, in stars and 
flowers, in the majestic order of the universe, in the 
infinite variety of creation. And if we do not see 
this, we do not see his working. Nature plies ever- 
more at the roaring loom of time to weave a garment 
by which we may see God. And then, because 



1 84 SELF-CUL TURE. 

" the world is too much with us," we are out of tune 
for it all, and it does not move us. Therefore, the 
great Christian poet declares he had rather be a 
Pagan suckled in an outworn creed, for then he 
might catch a glimpse of something divine in nature, 
— of Proteus rising from the sea, or Triton blowing 
his horn. 

To see God in the order, variety, majesty, tender- 
ness of the universe will save us from superstitious 
terrors. This gives us a sense 

" Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns. 
A motion and a spirit, which pervades 
All living things, all ohjects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things." 

And this will drive away the foul terrors of hell, 
and the narrow doctrines which make God a tyrant 
and man a slave. Our bigotry fades away as we 
look at the midnight stars and at the rising sun ; 
our anxiety leaves us as we feel the gentle gradations 
of autumnal tints, and the slow decay of the dying 
year. God seen in nature corrects the superstitions 
born of the narrowness of human creeds. 

The imagination may be educated by the sight of 
beauty, and by making all our own life beautiful ; 
that is, by receiving and giving the beautiful. 

All men have the power of seeing beauty. If we 
love it, and look for it, we shall see it everywhere. 
The great law, " Seek and ye shall find," applies here 
as in other things. Some men pass their lives in 



THE IMAGINATION. 185 

ugliness, seeing only ugly objects everywhere. Others 
are always surrounded by beauty. The reason is 
that some have cultivated the habit of looking for 
it, others not. Milton lived in London, but he saw 
more beauty in one morning's walk in the country 
than many country people observe in all their lives. 
It is not necessary to go to Switzerland in order to 
find the Alps. You can see them after any thunder- 
storm in summer. Then the departing masses of 
cloud, bathed by the western sun, swell into vast 
snow-mountains, and roll up into great glaciers and 
fields of ice. 

"We also educate the imagination by creating good 
things and beautiful things. Every man is an artist 
who tries to do his work perfectly, for its own sake, 
and not merely because of what he can get by it. He 
gets a great deal more this way than he will in any 
other. Every man can turn his life into poetry, 
romance, art, by living according to an ideal stand- 
ard. He may be a day-laborer, a mechanic, a sweeper 
of street- crossings ; but, if he puts his soul into his 
work, his work becomes a fine art. No one may 
notice it, but he notices it himself, and I think that 
God and the angels notice it also. 

There is an old Norse story of a blacksmith who 
sold himself to the devil on condition that, during a 
certain number of years, he might be the best black- 
smith in the world. So over his shop-door he wrote, 
" Voland the Smith, Master of Masters." One day 
Jesus Christ came in, and said he could teach him 



186 SELF-CULTURE. 

something lie did not know, and showed him a 
better way of shoeing a horse than he had ever seen. 
Voland, in delight at seeing this better way, forgot 
his vanity and pride, and asked to be allowed to be 
a scholar, and sit at the feet of this greater Master. 
Then Jesus said : " Now you have escaped from the 
power of the devil, for you have learned a better 
way than he could teach. He only made you a 
master from pride, in order to be better than all 
others ; you have learned of me to be a master for 
the sake of the work itself, and in order to learn 
you have been willing to humble yourself." 

Perfect expression becomes beauty. Truth, per- 
fectly expressed, becomes beautiful poetry, rhetoric, 
oratory. Goodness, when it is so perfectly expressed 
in life as to rise above all effort and struggle, becomes 
the beauty of holiness. Nature, being a perfect 
expression of God's will, is a revelation of the divine 
beauty. The imagination is the faculty by means 
of which we grasp this beauty, and hold it before 
our mind while we attempt to realize ,it. Every 
human action done well partakes of this element of 
beauty. When books were all written with the pen, 
before the invention of printing, many manuscripts 
were so beautifully written as to become works of 
art. A piece of good handwriting is still beautiful ; 
good reading is beautiful. This element of beauty 
descends into the most humble acts of human life, 
and gives a charm to every human work when it is 
done according to an ideal standard. 



the imagination: 187 

If we limit beauty too narrowly, we fall into the 
danger of becoming fastidious. This is a disease 
which affects many artists, and grows into an irri- 
table and nervous dislike of everything not in the 
best taste. It is a bad thing to cultivate the love of 
beauty when it makes common things, people, life, 
distasteful to us. It need not do so, as appears from 
the example of such great poets as Burns, Words- 
worth, "Whittier, who have known how to glorify 
common life and every-day people with the charm 
of romance. These great masters make the humblest 
flower immortal in their song ; walk in glory and in 
joy, following their plough along the side of the 
mountain ; and impart some random truth from the 
common things which lie around us. 

No man can be wholly unhappy who is accus- 
tomed to look for beauty in nature and in human 
life. His is a joy which never wearies. As we 
grow old many of our senses grow dull, but the 
sense of beauty becomes a more perfect enchantment 
every year. Each new spring seems to open in 
more exuberant, miraculous grace, tenderness, and 
charm than the last. Every new rosebud seems 
the most perfect one we ever saw. The tender lights 
and rosy coloring of the auroral dawn ; the drifting 
feathery cirri clouds in the depths of the blue 
heavens ; the grace of a kitten playing on the carpet ; 
the wonder in the eyes of an infant ; the innocent 
snow, with its soft curves, drifting over fields and 
weighing down the laboring trees ; the splendor of 



188 SELF- CUL TURE. 

sunset, when the king of day holds his court, sur- 
rounded by his magnificent cloud-courtiers, appar- 
elled in all gorgeous colors ; the forest and wood, 
with their delicate mosses below, and their lights 
and shadows above, — how the goodness of God 
seems to descend into our human heart through all 
these messages, saying how he loves us, and what a 
home he has made for us ! 

Let us thank the great poets of modern times who 
have taught us to discover a divine presence in the 
charm and wonder of the visible universe. These 
are our schoolmasters to bring us to God in nature. 
I am thankful that I was born late enough to be 
taught these lessons by Wordsworth and Coleridge, 
and their noble contemporaries. It has added a 
great charm to my life, and I think a depth to my 
religion. 

The diseases of the imagination are of two kinds : 
one is of lethargy, when it is stupefied, and does not 
act ; the other is when it is in excess, and acts 
without restraint or guidance. 

All mere drudgery tends to stupefy the imagina- 
tion. And all work is drudgery which is done 
mechanically, with the hand and not with the mind; 
when we are not trying to do our work as well as 
possible, but only as well as is necessary. Such work 
stupefies the ideal faculty, quenches the sense of 
beauty. The day-laborer is not necessarily a drudge, 
for he may try to do his work as well as he can. 
When he does this he becomes an artist. 



THE IMAGINATION. 189 

But when a man tries to shirk his work, when he 
does it in a slovenly way, not as well as he might, 
then he becomes a drudge, even though his work be 
that of a poet or a sculptor. He ceases to exercise 
his ideal faculty, and stupefies it. Then the sense 
of beauty dies out of his mind. "When men conform 
to custom, though they know it is wrong custom, 
sacrifice conscience to convenience, principle to suc- 
cess, say and do, not what they believe true and 
right, but what they think to be popular and profit- 
able ; then, though they may be senators and states- 
men, great lawyers or great preachers, they are really 
drudges ; they are stupefying their ideal nature. 

The other disease of the imagination is when it is 
unrestrained and unregulated. Some people live in 
a world of dreams, apart from life. They are cradled 
in illusions ; they surround themselves with a world 
of romance ; they become disgusted with actual life ; 
they feed their minds with novels, fairy-tales, and 
works of fancy, and thus become unfitted for reality. 
They abhor everything commonplace ; they indulge 
in reverie, and make their daily food of what should 
be, at best, an occasional refreshment. Now, this is 
a real disease of the imagination. It is fever, and 
tends to uselessness, unrest, and insanity. 

The cure for both these diseases is the same. It 
is to seek beauty, not in the world of dreams, but in 
the actual world, and the actual life. It is to look 
for beauty everywhere, — in common things, common 
people, common work, common life. Looking thus 



190 SELF-CULTURE. 

we shall soon see that beauty is no monopoly of 
artists, poets, dreamers ; that all life may become 
high art ; that all we do, when done according to an 
ideal standard, instantly partakes of this element of 
beauty. Then, too, it will be seen that all nature is 
saturated and overflowing with beauty; that our 
Italy and Switzerland are here in Massachusetts ; 
that one look at the morning sky or the evening 
sunset may reveal inexhaustible delights ; that 

" You cannot wave your staff in the air, 
Or dip your paddle in the lake, 
But it carves the bow of beauty there, 
And the ripples in rhyme the oar forsake." 

Beauty divorced from use ceases to be beautiful, 
as piety divorced from goodness ceases to be piety. 

The greatest works of art were all made for some 
great human uses, — the Parthenon and Strasburg 
minster for worship, the Transfiguration and the 
Dresden Madonna to be the inspiration of the people 
in their churches, Shakspeare's plays to be daily 
bread for the people. Art, like the Sabbath, is made 
for man, not man for art. 

Let men be taught, then, to look for beauty in all 
they see, and to embody beauty in all they do, and 
the imagination will then be both active and healthy. 
Life will be neither a drudgery nor a dream, but will 
become full of God's life and love. 

" I slept, and dreamed that Life was Beauty, 
I woke, and found that Life was Duty. 



THE IMAGINATION. 191 

Was my dream, then, a shadowy lie? 
Toil on, sad heart, courageously, — 
And thou shalt find thy dream shall he 
A noon-day light and truth to thee." 

Yes, for all duties, when thoroughly and perfectly- 
done, according to a standard in the soul, become 
works of art. Beauty sought by itself vanishes in 
dreams ; beauty sought in reality becomes the charm 
of our life. 

The more that we see of beauty everywhere, — 
in nature, in life, in man and child, in work and 
rest, in the outward and the inward world, — the 
more we see of God. His divine perfection is per- 
ceived, however dimly, in all that he has made. 
" Now we see it darkly, as in a glass ; but then 
face to face." That which we have learned to know 
and love here, by a due use and culture of the 
imagination, we shall see fully then, in the radiant 
glory of a higher world. 

This is the culture of the imagination : first, to 
learn to see the beauty and grace which God has 
poured out on sky, land, and sea ; on body and soul ; 
on life and conduct ; on society and art ; then, to 
be a creator of beauty as God creates it, carrying 
this idea of the perfect into all that we do, learning 
continually to think more exactly, speak more accu- 
rately, live more truly, and finish all we undertake 
well. So shall we be brought into the love of that 
divine beauty which is above all, through all, and in 
us all. This is that beauty which not only dwells 



192 SELF-CULTURE. 

in the summer sun and the round ocean, but is also 
a beauty known to neither sea nor land, but bor- 
rowed from the prophetic soul itself, " dreaming of 
things to come." 

I can wish nothing better for any one than to 
respect this great faculty in his soul, and to train 
it to see and to create always that which is best. 
Thus a blameless pleasure will pervade our lives, — 
life will grow richer, not poorer, as we grow older. 
We shall see more and more of the divine love in 
all things, and ever come nearer to God and to 
man. 



IX. 
EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE. 



IX. 

EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE. 



BY the conscience I mean the principle, or in- 
stinct, or power within every man, which 
shows to him the distinction between right and 
wrong; makes him feel that he ought to do some 
things, ought not to do others ; and gives him a 
sense of satisfaction when he does what he believes 
to be right, of dissatisfaction when he does what he 
believes to be wrong. Eegarded as an intellectual 
power, it is the sight of duty as an idea ; viewed as 
a motive, it is that which prompts to moral conduct; 
considered as sentiment, it is the feeling of merit or 
demerit, of remorse or self-approbation. 

There are those, we know, who maintain that 
there is no such faculty in man as this, asserting 
that, in the last analysis, these convictions may be 
reduced to the sense of what is profitable, useful, and 
pleasant. The reasons for this opinion, as given by 
Archdeacon Paley, are such as these. 

" Historians and travellers tell us that there is 
scarcely a vice which has not in some age or coun- 



196 SELF-CUL TURE. 

try been approved by public opinion, scarcely a 
virtue which has not been condemned ; that in one 
country it is thought right for children to support 
their aged parents, in another to despatch them out 
of the way. In one age suicide is heroism, in 
another felony; theft was rewarded in Sparta as 
meritorious ; duelling is praised or condemned, ac- 
cording to the sex, age, or station of the speaker." 
Hence it is inferred there is no moral sense in 
man. 

This objection to a moral sense would be con- 
clusive if we maintain that conscience teaches us 
what is right or wrong. But this we do not say. 
We say it gives us the idea of right and wrong ; 
causes us to approve what we believe right, disap- 
prove what we believe to be wrong. What is right 
and wrong has to be learned, as we learn other 
truths, by the exercise of the reason and by expe- 
rience. 

The idea of right is not the same as that of the 
profitable or pleasant. They cannot be made to 
seem the same. The idea of right and wrong is 
primary, — it is not to be explained into any other 
notion. It resists all further analysis. When you 
reach that, you arrive at a fundamental idea, a pri- 
mary fact. In reality, you may be said to be looking 
at God himself on one side of his being. It would 
be bad if we could explain it away, for then we 
should see so much less of God. 

But it cannot be explained away. All the world 



EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE. 197 

over, in all lands, in all times, wherever man is to 
be found, is found this conception of duty. There 
is no race, no individual so low, but that something 
seems to him to be right, something wrong. There is 
no language among the thousand varieties of human 
speech which has not the words "ought," "ought not;" 
" right," " wrong ; " " duty," " obligation." And not a 
day passes but men use these words. Some things 
seem to all men to be just, other things unjust. Some 
people are said to deserve reward, others to merit 
punishment. When you say, " That man is a vil- 
lain, he ought to be punished," you do not mean 
the same thing as when you say, " That man has 
made a mistake which is doing us harm." You 
do not have the same feeling toward one who 
injures you accidentally and one who injures you 
deliberately. 

Is there any one who does not know the difference 
between regret and remorse ? I am sorry for mis- 
fortune, but I feel guilty for sin. It may be a small 
sin which I have committed. It may be a slight 
deviation from the truth, a slight dereliction from 
duty. No matter. I often feel as deeply this small 
wrong-doing as if it were ever so great an injury to 
myself or others. For there is no great, no small, 
in right and wrong. In that which is expedient or 
inexpedient the question of more or less may be of 
importance. In going to the railway station it may, 
perhaps, be better to go by one street than by another. 
I may save a minute or two. But if I take the 



198 SELF-CULTURE. 

worst road, or go the longest way, I only suffer tem- 
poral evil. In regard to all success and failure, all 
prosperity or adversity, the proverb applies, " It will 
make no difference a hundred years hence." But 
that proverb does not apply to doing right or wrong. 
It makes a difference, or seems to us that it will 
make a difference, a thousand years hence, a million 
years hence. It makes a difference forever. This 
is the only way in which we can believe in eternal 
punishment. It may make a difference to all eter- 
nity whether we do right or wrong to-day. 

In buying something in a shop, I find I have paid 
by mistake a dollar too much. That is no great 
matter. Or, perhaps, I have lost a dollar from my 
pocket-book. That does not trouble me. But sup- 
pose I receive a counterfeit dollar in change. I 
have a feeling that I am wronged. It is not the 
loss, it is the injustice, which troubles me. And 
now suppose that having taken this counterfeit, I 
pass it over on some one else. I say, " I took it ; 
now let some one else take it." Instead of destroy- 
ing it, as I ought to do, I let it slip out of my hands 
into those of some other person. This is an action 
which may trouble me a million years hence, may 
trouble me in heaven. 

If the devil should appear visibly to any of us, 
— if he should enter undisguised, with visible horns 
and tail, and offer you millions for your soul, you 
would refuse, and say, " Get thee behind me, Satan." 
But when he comes in the form of business, and 



EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE. 199 

says, " Do as other people do. It may not be quite 
right, but every one else does it. Do not be too 
puritanical. Be not righteous overmuch ; why de- 
stroy yourself ? " then, perhaps, we sell our soul to 
him for a very paltry sum ; and, perhaps, he cheats 
us out of that small sum, after all. 

How the one deep voice of the human conscience 
sounds out of the past, striking the same chord of 
eternal right ! Eead the biographies of Plutarch. 
What a wholesome tonic there is in the words of 
those heroic souls speaking in the service of immor- 
tal justice and right ! Homer makes a hero say, 
" I consulted my own great mind." When Dion 
had his enemy in his power, he said, " I have con- 
quered Heraclides in war, now I will show that I 
am superior to him in justice. The laws allow 
revenge, but must Dion sully his glory by indulging 
it ? " So he pardoned his foe, and set Mm free. 
Cato the Younger was such a truthful man that it 
became a proverb, " I would not believe it, even if 
Cato said it." In his day, as in ours, there were 
rings and lobbies, and Cato proposed a law requiring 
every man to declare on oath whether he had been 
elected to his office by such means. This made him 
so unpopular that he was stoned as he went to the 
Forum, and his companions fled, but he stood so firm 
and calm that the tumult subsided, and he was 
heard in silence. " A just man and tenacious of his 
purpose," says Horace, " fears neither the tyrant noi 
the mob." 



200 SELF-CULTURE. 

The people of Athens had such respect for the 
integrity of Aristides that once, when Themistocles 
told them he had a plan which would be of great 
advantage to Athens, but must not be told publicly, 
they said, " Tell it to Aristides, and if he says we 
ought to do it, we will." He did so, and it proved 
to be a plan to seize the ships of the other Greeks, 
and so make themselves masters of the sea. Aris- 
tides then told the people that " nothing could be 
more profitable, but nothing more unjust, than the 
measure proposed by Themistocles." So the Atheni- 
ans rejected it, without hearing what it was. 

The whole of social life is rooted in conscience. 
Honest men are the salt of the earth. If God had 
not given to us this sense of justice, society would 
be impossible. If all men thought only of what was 
profitable and pleasant, no man's life would be safe. 
What is it holds society together ? Is it your laws, 
your courts, your police, your prisons, your gallows, 
your militia ? No ! 

It is only for the outlaws, the dangerous classes, 
those who have thrown off the restraints of con- 
science, that we build prisons and establish courts. 
The law is for the lawless. But the great mass of 
men do right because they have a conscience. " Con- 
science makes cowards of us all," says Shakspeare ; 
it makes men afraid to do the evil they would like 
to do. In our fancy, in our imagination, we may 
conceive of ourselves as having the ring of Gyges, 
the purse of Fortunatus. But if we had these mar- 



EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE. 201 

vellous powers we should not use tbem. Our con- 
science would prevent us. Men often imagine 
themselves better than they are ; but they also 
imagine themselves worse than they are. Dickens's 
character who was in the habit of uttering terrific 
threats against those who injured him, saying that 
they ought to be flayed alive, and that he should 
like to see them hung ; and who yet was, in reality, 
a very kind-hearted man, who would not hurt a fly, 
— this character is a very natural one. Conscience 
is a power within us, not merely a conviction or a 
purpose. The sense of duty becomes at last incar- 
nate in our nature, and turns into character. It 
often holds us to the right against our will, when 
we would be glad to go wrong. So it is that edu- 
cated, trained, enlightened conscience is the corner- 
stone of society. 

But it must be educated and trained ; for a 
diseased conscience, a torpid conscience, a falsely 
instructed conscience, an ignorant conscience, an 
irritable conscience, a weak conscience, a conscience 
defiled by evil, a conscience seared or impure, may 
be worse for the time than no conscience at all. 
Conscience is a power which can be misdirected, 
and will then do more harm than good. The cruelty 
of savages is not equal to the cruelty of saints who 
think it their duty to torment their fellow-creatures. 
Let a father only think it his duty to treat his chil- 
dren with severity, let a teacher believe that he ought' 
to be stern and hard, and natural sympathy and 



202 SELF-CULTURE. 

love are frozen at their roots. From a sense of duty 
the Phoenicians burned their children alive ; from a 
sense of duty tens of thousands of martyrs have been 
tortured at the stake ; from a sense of duty husbands 
have been selfish, wives obstinate, friends unfriendly. 
Those whose hearts yearned to love each other have 
been cold as ice, because they thought they ought to 
be so. From a sense of duty men have inflicted on 
themselves tortures without end ; have denied them- 
selves common joys ; have tormented themselves 
with imaginary sins ; have thought it right to be- 
lieve God a tyrant, and man a depraved being, to be 
always looking at hell, not at heaven. 

Cotton Mather, who wrote a book on " doing 
good," so earnest, persuasive, tender, that Dr. Frank- 
lin attributed to it whatever useful acts he himself 
had done in the world, — this same Cotton Mather, 
misled by an ignorant conscience, stood by rejoicing 
when seventeen persons were hung at Salem for 
witchcraft. So hard may a good man's heart be- 
come when his conscience is darkened by super- 
stition. 

In all parts of life conscience is the most impor- 
tant of elements. The civilization is cheap and 
weak which has not the backbone of conscience in it. 
You cannot have a coat well made, a horse properly 
shod, a house decently built, a good cup of tea or 
coffee, unless there is conscience in those who serve 
you. Money will not buy good articles ; it will only 
buy what seems good. Your clothes come to pieces ; 



EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE. 203 

they were not conscientiously made. Your house 
takes fire and burns down ; for the carpenter put a 
beam into the chimney, because you could not know 
it. Your tea, sugar, flour, spices, tobacco, everything 
you use, is adulterated. You think you are buying 
coffee ; you get chicory, beans, burnt sugar, and dried 
bread. Flour is mixed with your mustard, leaves 
of herbs with your tobacco. Everything is adulter- 
ated where there is no conscience. 

One would think that nothing would be so sought 
after in business as an honest man. If my clerk 
cheats me, if my cashier robs the till, if a bank-teller 
falsifies his accounts to get money with which to 
speculate, I may be ruined before I know it. Never- 
theless, no one goes about like Diogenes, looking- 
for an honest man ; all are looking for smart men. 
An honest man, a little slow, gets a salary of one 
thousand dollars a year ; a smart man, who will rob 
you on the first good occasion, you buy with five 
thousand. 

All men have conscience ; almost all men mean 
to do right ; most men do generally act up to their 
own standard of right. But the standard of right 
with most men is simply the public opinion around. 
What others think is right, they think right. The 
social standard of duty guides the conscience of nine 
persons out of ten. Therefore it is of the utmost 
importance to educate the public conscience on all 
"subjects of practical morality. 

All means should be used to keep public opinion 



2 04 SELF-CUL TURE. 

right in its standard of duty. A man takes trust 
funds and gambles with them, or a bank cashier 
takes the money of the bank and speculates with it. 
People are first angry with him, then sorry for him, 
then agree to compromise, then let him off, then 
help him to do the same thing again. This is all 
very kind and benevolent. But what is the result ? 
You are educating your young men, your clerks, 
your agents, to believe that there is no great harm 
in doing the same thing. Do it on a large scale, 
tho,t is all. You are systematically corrupting the 
conscience of the community. You are teaching 
them that in this kind of stealing there is no harm. 
To steal by picking a man's pocket sends one to the 
State's prison ; but to steal by robbing shareholders, 
plundering tax -payers by means of rings and lobbies, 
that is financial ability ; or, at the worst, if one is 
found out, a financial irregularity. 

If these things are done in the green tree, what 
will be done in the dry ? We are hardly three 
generations removed from the Puritans, men whose 
lives were hard, dry, austere, who were implacable 
towards God's enemies as they understood them, 
but who lived and had their being in conscience. 
They would have cut off a right hand, and plucked 
out a right eye, rather than have done wrong. If 
corruption of conscience is the result of our civiliza- 
tion, then better that all our wealth were sunk in 
the Atlantic. Better that every railroad were torn 
up, every steamer sunk, every manufactory burned 



EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE. 205 

to the ground, and we again be dressed in homespun, 
and living in log-cabins. We should then, at least, 
have God, truth, nature, love, justice for our friends 
and companions, if we did not have fine dresses and 
champagne suppers. 

The public conscience is being fast corrupted. 
When corporations are in turn plundered and become 
plunderers, and there is no redress ; when lawyers 
in the front rank of their profession sell their talents 
and influence to protect public robbers ; when those 
who steal thousands from widows and orphans are 
allowed to walk the streets unharmed ; when smart- 
ness and not honesty is in demand, — then society is 
in danger of dissolution. The salt has lost its savor ; 
what is it good for ? What is the use of the church, 
the school, the college, the press, if they cannot 
instruct the community in common honesty ? 

This is what the salt is for. We talk about the 
importance of reading the Bible in the schools, and 
think it will be a dreadful thing to let the Catholics 
exclude it from them. But if, instead of a few 
minutes given to reading the letter of the Bible, all 
our school-teachers should daily give their scholars 
practical lessons in honesty and generosity ; if they 
should thrill those young hearts with noble stories 
of virtue, — no Catholic would object to that, I 
think, and those seeds would bear fruit for the 
healing and safety of the nation. 

And if the pulpit, instead of its controversial 
theology or its sentimental devotion, its talk about 



206 SELF-CULTURE. 

" the church " or its abuse of heresy, should every 
week set up a standard of right ; should call all men 
to " do justly and love mercy and walk humbly 
with God ; " if it should make goodness attractive, 
and show that wickedness is always misery and 
ruin, — then the whole church would work together 
to build up a righteous community, a kingdom of 
heaven. 

Beside the school, the college, the pulpit, the 
public mind is educated by the press. Whatever 
else a man does or leaves undone every day, he 
always reads the newspaper. Now, there are three 
kinds of newspapers. 

First, there is the satanic newspaper, which delib- 
erately caters to the lowest tastes ; which constantly 
sneers at justice and humanity; which educates 
the community to self-conceit. Let people be ac- 
customed every day to have it assumed that all con- 
scientiousness is hypocrisy, all religion a sham, all 
interest in other men a weakness, and at last they 
take that tone, and lose their sense of the nobleness 
of virtue. 

Then there is another class of newspapers, rare 
enough, few enough, and yet we have some such, 
who stai.d up for national justice and honor. They 
battle through long years against atrocious wrong, 
resting on no less a deep foundation than conscience. 
They appeal to that, and not in vain. They may 
be inconsistent, and often wrong, as we think ; they 
may be prejudiced ; but they do an immense service. 



EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE. 207 

They are not afraid to expose iniquity in low places 
and in high. They throw light into the villany 
which likes darkness and concealment. The jour- 
nals which do this are great moral guides, and de- 
serve well of their country. 

And then there is a third class, of which it may 
be said that they are neither cold nor hot, but luke- 
warm. They are never heartily in favor of right, 
nor openly on the side of wrong. If any effort is 
made to improve the community, they approve of 
the object, but predict its failure. They overflow in 
eulogy of the good men who are dead and gone, but 
never have the courage to speak one strong word in 
behalf of the good men who are fighting against evil 
to-day. They generally think such persons are 
injudicious, unpractical, and in bad taste. These 
journals may be said to represent the cowardice of 
the community. While the first class of journals 
educate the public mind to evil, and the second lift 
the national conscience to truth and right, this last 
sort teach the community indifference. Better that 
they were cold or hot than to be thus lukewarm. 

What is needed is the education of the conscience. 
The chief diseases of the conscience are stupor and 
ignorance. The conscience may be inactive, or it 
may be badly instructed. The sins of the time, the 
crimes against society, the swindling transactions, 
the defalcations, the betrayals of trust, the repudia- 
tion of public obligations, are not usually deliberate 
violations of what is seen to be right, but rather 



208 SELF-CULTURE. 

come from consciences stupefied, sophisticated, and 
uninstructed. 1 

The education of the conscience is of three kinds. 
It needs to be awakened, to be enlightened, and to 
be trained. It is awakened by being taught the 
obligations we owe to God and man; that man is 
under law ; that no one has any right to do as he 
pleases, but that all are responsible to God and to 
the truth for every action of their lives. It is roused 
by the doctrine of the judgment to come, by being 



1 Take, for example, the proposition made a few years since to 
pay the national debt in silver, when silver was below par, — a 
plan at one time very popular, and which would have inflicted so 
much injury on the honor and welfare of the nation, and which 
would have been a blow to national credit, and the source of 
disaster. "We mistake if we suppose that the people of the West 
and South were deliberately doing what they knew to be wrong in 
supporting it. They were misled by artful demagogues. They 
were taught to believe that, as the letter of the law allowed pay- 
ment of the early bonds in coin of either kind, there would be no 
injustice in paying them in a depreciated currency. The}^ were 
persuaded that the demonetization of silver was a cunning trick of 
rich bondholders, done in order to oppress the poor, and that the 
people had been defrauded thus of the money which would give 
new activity to business and furnish employment to thousands. 
But when they were taught that this was all false, and that the 
plan was in the interest of speculators ; when they saw that it 
would be defrauding every man who had any money due him of 
ten cents on a dollar; that it would be cheating the foreign cred- 
itors who lent us their money in our war when we needed it to 
save the nation ; that it would be cheating the widows and orphans 
whose small means were intrusted to the honor of the country ; 
that it would be cheating every farmer out of a tenth part of the 



EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE. 209 

taught that all our lives are to be ultimately kuown 
and seen in the light of eternal truth, and that every 
man is to give an account of himself to God. It is 
the duty of the Church to arouse the conscience by 
these solemn truths, and to show to all men that for 
every idle word they are to give an account in the 
day of the revelation of God's truth ; that there is 
nothing covered that shall not be revealed, nor any- 
thing hid which shall not be known. 

Then the conscience, having been awakened, needs 



price of his wheat, every day-laborer of the tenth part of his day's 
wages ; and all to put more money into the pockets of the rich 
owners of the silver mines, — then the conscience of the land re- 
fused to accept such a proposition. These truths were taught 
boldly, plainly, unequivocally, in tones which reached every log- 
cabin beyond the mountains. The people were taught that the 
collapse of business was the natural result of over-trading, over- 
investments in costly- speculations, and pushing the credit system 
to an extreme point. They were taught that what we needed 
for the revival of business was not more money, but more confi- 
dence ; that there was money enough, but that those who had it 
would not risk it. They were made to see that confidence comes 
not by repudiation of debts, not by expansion and depreciation of 
the currency, not by trying to cheat creditors, but by exactly the 
opposite course, and that all these measures would only increase the 
evils under which we suffered. They saw at last that the remedy 
for the state of commercial distrust was that each man should 
learn economy, give up extravagance, quit speculation, do a safe 
business, pay his debts promptly, and that the government should 
lead the way by resuming specie payments ; that is, by beginning 
to pay its honest debts in honest money. As soon as the con- 
science of the nation was enlightened on such points as these, 
such a piece of dishonesty as the Bland bill became impossible. 
14 



210 SELF-CULTURE. 

to be enlightened; it needs to be taught the differ- 
ence between right and wrong in all things. For 
this purpose we must have some standard, rule, code 
of ethics. 

Many of the worst actions done in the world have 
been done by honest people, who conscientiously 
believed that they were doing right. Most perse- 
cutors, from the time of Paul down through the In- 
quisitors, who burned thousands in Spain for some 
supposed heresy, to the Alvas and Philips, Louis 
XIV., Bloody Mary and her more bloody father, — 
these have believed themselves doing God service. 
The instruction of the conscience is therefore of the 
utmost importance. But where is the code ? what is 
the standard ? 

Most Christians will tell us that the Gospel of 
Jesus gives us a code of ethics which is sufficient 
for all purposes. But there is no such systematic 
code in the IsTew Testament. We are there taught 
principles of right rather than rules. These great 
principles are no doubt sufficient to raise the world 
to a far higher condition of morals than it has yet 
attained. Such is the golden rule of doing to others 
as we would wish them to do to us; or, putting 
ourselves in their place. Such are the large direc- 
tions like these : " Overcome evil with good;" "Speak 
the truth in love ; " " Love God with all your heart, 
and love your neighbor as yourself;" "Let your yea 
be yea, and your nay nay ; " " Love your enemies, 
bless those that persecute you ; " " Forgive, that ye 



EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE. 211 

may be forgiven ; " " He that lmmbleth himself shall 
be exalted;" "It is more blessed to give than to 
receive." 

The Apostle Paul gives it as his opinion that all 
duties to others are comprehended in the saying, 
" Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself ; " because 
a man who loves his neighbor as himself will not 
cheat him, or injure him in any other way. Still, 
considered in the light of an exhaustive criticism, 
this is not enough. For a conscientious inquisitor 
would honestly say, " If I were a heretic as he is, I 
should think that I ought to be burned alive." We 
need, then, a rule to show him that neither he nor 
his neighbor should be punished for his opinion. 
This other rule is no doubt to be found in such 
sayings as "Judge not, that ye be not judged;" 
"Who art thou that judgest another man's servant?" 
But, after all, Christianity is a spirit rather than a 
code. It is an inspiration from which codes and 
rules may come, but it does not give them. 

These rules come, as we have said, from experience. 
No doubt there are some great ideas of right common 
to the whole human race, to which the soul of man 
in all lands and times gives its assent. These ideas 
may be reduced to two, — truth and love. 

These two, truth and love, are the antagonist but 
not contradictory principles from which all ethics 
must be developed. They are the two poles of the 
moral universe, which are harmonized in God into 
a sublime unity, and which approach a similar unity 



212 SELF-CULTURE. 

in all good men. They are equally venerable, equally 
beautiful. All goodness partakes of both elements ; 
and in all true excellence mercy and truth meet 
together, righteousness and peace kiss each other. 

The doctrine which makes utility the criterion of 
ethics is inadequate, because it is always in danger 
of sacrificing principle to expediency ; that is, of 
postponing truth to love. If we make " the greatest 
good of the greatest number " an absolute rule of 
ethics, we risk sacrificing those noble instincts which 
have made heroes, saints, and martyrs in all time. 
When we are obliged to ask always and only, " What 
good will this action do to mankind ? " we may 
easily fail of seeing the good of the very best actions. 
The heart, in such cases, is often wiser than the 
head. So it was in the case of that noble man, 
John Stuart Mill, when he uttered the sentiment, 
the most admired, perhaps, in all his writings. 
Denying with great energy the doctrine that the 
standard of right and wrong can be different in 
man and God, he added that " if he must go to hell 
for such a denial, to hell he would go." Now Mr. 
Mill was a firm believer in the doctrine that the true 
standard in morals is the greatest good of the great- 
est number. Miss Frances Power Cobbe thereupon 
acutely remarked, that if it was right for Mr. Mill 
to go to hell for this conviction, it must be right 
for all others to do so too, and that thus all man- 
kind ought to be willing to go to hell " for the great- 
est good of the greatest number." 



EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE. 213 

Every case of conscience which arises must be 
decided by itself, according to this law of supreme 
and equal reverence for truth on the one side and 
for love on the other. Truth must not be sacrificed 
to love, nor love to truth. It is only because of our 
ignorance or our weakness that this ever seems 
necessary. In the highest state of the soul it is 
not necessary. 

All real difficulties as to what is right will turn 
out, in the last analysis, to come from the supposed 
conflict of these two principles. Is it right for a 
physician to lie to his patient about his disease, 
when telling the truth might injure him? May I 
lie to another for his good, or to a highway robber 
to save his victim, or to a murderer to prevent a 
crime ? On the other hand, must I sacrifice love to 
truth by telling the truth which will injure my 
friend; by standing by my principles and con- 
victions when they will injure those I love ? Must 
I be scrupulously honest when no one requires it 
of me, and when a great apparent injury will result 
from it ? He who sacrifices all expediency to a 
theory or a belief is in danger of becoming a fanatic. 
He who gives up his principles whenever some risk 
or some evil seems likely to follow their application 
will soon do evil that good may come. 

No absolute rule can be laid down for all such 
cases. There are dangers on either hand. We need 
principles of right-doing to guide us, to which we 
must cling for safety, even at the risk of seeming 



214 SELF-CULTURE. 

scrupulous and puritanical. Conscience in little 
things is our only safeguard against temptation. If 
we adopt the theory of ethics which makes right 
another name for utility, and makes utility the 
criterion of right, we are liable to imagine the thing 
we wish to be useful. How many men in places of 
trust — trustees, cashiers of banks, treasurers of 
corporations, town treasurers — have been tempted 
in this way, and brought disgrace on themselves and 
their families ? They said, "We can use these funds 
to advantage for ourselves, and no harm to others. 
We are sure to succeed in this speculation. We shall 
gain, and no one lose." The only safeguard for men 
in such positions is an inflexible principle. "Do 
right, though the heavens fall." " Touch not, taste 
not, handle not." " Eesist the beginnings." Such 
is the language of wisdom in all time. This is the 
panoply — the armor cap-a-pie — which alone makes 
one safe.- 

Truth embodies itself in these stern and sure 
laws, these inflexible rules of justice, honor, fidelity 
to trusts, loyalty to engagements, adherence to prom- 
ises, abhorrence of the slightest dishonesty. To such 
a spirit the rights of all are sacred, of friends and 
enemies alike. 

Join with that the spirit of love, which seeks the 
good of all, which desires to help all, — not for 
their gratitude, not for reputation or for praise, but 
because it is more blessed to give than to receive. 
Thus truth is for the sake of love, and love for the 



EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE. 215 

sake of truth. We do good to others for our own 
sake, in order to be true to ourselves. We are faith- 
ful to truth and right, because we know that this 
only will help and save the human race. 

The spirit of righteousness is more than the letter ; 
and if we live in that spirit, we shall also walk 
in it. 

After the awakening and instruction of the con- 
science, comes its training or discipline. And this 
is each man's own work. This he must teach him- 
self by practice. Even the Apostle says, "Herein 
do I exercise myself, to keep a conscience always 
void of offence toward God and man." This exer- 
cise requires self-study, self-knowledge. We have 
all of us our besetting sins, our special moral danger, 
and our special moral strength. We should find 
out what our peculiar need is, and arrange our life 
and our circumstances accordingly. A bad habit, 
which cannot be conquered directly, may be over- 
come by arranging circumstances to help us. If a 
man is indolent, he should put himself where he 
will be obliged to work. If he is irritable, he should 
avoid the occasions which will excite his temper. 
If he is tempted to insincerity and falsehood, he 
should surround himself with all possible influences 
and helps to keep him to the strictest verity. And 
in all this he needs the help of religion, of daily 
prayer, and of living always in the great Taskmaster's 
eye. 

Beside the public conscience, of which we all 



216 SELF-CUL TURE. 

partake, every man- needs, for his own self-respect, 
to have a conscience of his own. He needs to have 
some principles of right by which to live, and then 
to live accordingly. " Have salt in yourselves," 
says Jesus. Your conscience can no more be kept 
healthy without exercise than your body ; and the 
best: exercise for the conscience is in holding fast its 
integrity in small things. Here lies the chief temp- 
tation to wrong. To tell a small untruth, to utter a 
little word of unkindness, to cheat in some very 
unimportant matter, — these are the real temptations 
of life which beset us. 

Let a man be thoroughly conscientious, and he 
becomes the salt of society, the light of the world. 
He is the little candle which throws its steady 
beams very far into the night. Society leans on 
such men. The Church leans on them. The State 
leans on them. All depends on character. One man 
who has a character of his own, poised on principle, 
is stronger than all other men who copy each other. 
" When the righteous die," says the Talmud, " it is 
the earth which loses. The lost jewel will be always 
a jewel, wherever it goes ; but those who have lost 
it, they may weep." " He who has more knowledge 
than good works is like a tree with many branches 
and few roots, which the first wind throws on its 
face ; while he who does more than he says is like 
a tree with strong roots and few branches, which all 
the winds cannot uproot." Confucius says, " To live 
according to justice is like the pole-star, which 



EDUCATION OF THE CONSCIENCE. 217 

stands firm while the whole heaven moves around 
it." 

" What is a man profited, if he gain the whole 
world and lose his own soul ? " says Jesus. The 
Buddhist also says that "all the jewels and gold 
one can collect he drops from his hand when he 
dies, but every good action he has done is rooted 
into his soul, and can never leave him." 

" Happy is he who walks attended," says Milton, 
" by that strong-siding champion, Conscience." 



X. 



EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS 
AND SOCIAL POWERS. 



X. 



EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS 
AND SOCIAL POWERS. 



THE community of the early Christians, as 
described in the Book of Acts, was, I suppose, 
the best society the world has ever seen, the highest 
social condition yet attained by human beings. That 
was the divine compensation which they had for 
their poverty, persecution, danger. 

There was among them a thorough union of heart 
and soul, entire sympathy among themselves, ab- 
sence of selfish aims, each happy to give and willing 
to receive ; having one faith, one hope, one love. 
Their hearts were penetrated to the centre with the 
divine truth of the new gospel, and it developed 
their whole life, making some apostles, some prophets, 
some teachers ; bringing out all the gifts and graces 
that were in them. They lived together, they be- 
longed together. They were all brothers and sisters, 
fathers and children. They were so perfectly at 
one, that Paul could find no better similitude for 
1his union than that of the different limbs and 
organs of the human body working together toward 



222 SELF-CULTURE. 

one end; all "fitly joined together, and compacted 
by that which every joint supplieth." A man then 
no more thought of saying, "This is my place," 
" This is my right," than the hand thinks of saying 
to the foot, " This blood belongs to me, not to you," 
or of saying to the other hand, " I have a right to 
do this, you have not." 

This, I think, was, on the whole, the highest con- 
dition of human society ever yet attained. It had 
all the elements of the best society in it. (1.) A 
common cause, in which all were interested, harmo- 
nizing their varieties, subduing their differences, 
directing their faculties to one end. (2.) An enthu- 
siasm of love, which conquered for a time the selfish 
elements, and made them of one heart and soul. 
(3.) A new and profound experience of truth, devel- 
oping the best faculties of their nature. Thus they 
had a common truth, common work, and a common 
love ; and if that does not make the best society, 
what does ? 

It did not last; it could not. If it had lasted, 
heaven would have already come on the earth. Tor 
a few days this divine life of love lasted. " The sun 
stood still over Gibeon, and the moon in the valley 
of Ajalon," and then the old difficulties came back. 
Hypocrisy came into the church with Ananias and 
Sapphira ; sectarianism, with those who said, " I 
am of Paul," and " I am of Apollos." Old Adam 
was too strong for young Melancthon. But this 
gleam of glory remained, this enchanting vision of 



THE AFFECTIONS AND SOCIAL POWERS. 223 

•a pure, unselfish brotherhood, to. prove the possibil- 
ity of such a condition ; a prophecy, that some day 
it would be reached again, not by a few, but by all. 

Man was made for society. But, then, to be capa- 
ble of society, he must first be an individual. The 
conditions of a musical chord are these : that there 
shall be two notes, which are, first, different from each 
other ; and, secondly, in harmony with each other. 
So, for a perfect society, you must have first perfectly 
distinct individuals. Individual life and character 
must be developed before they can be harmonized. 

Man was made for society ; and an unsocial state 
is an unnatural state. Long ago, Dr. James Walker 
uttered a sentence which I have never forgotten, 
" There never was a greater misnomer than to call a 
savage a child of Nature." Nature did not make 
men to be noble savages, running wild in the woods, 
but to co-operate in society. It will do very well 
to spend a month or two in the Adirondacks or in 
the parks of Colorado in the summer, away from all 
social life ; but it is good because these few weeks 
of loneliness prepare the sauce of hunger for the 
social feast which is' to follow. 

The social instinct, in its lowest form, which is 
merely the wish to be with other people, is shared 
also by animals. Most animals are gregarious ; they 
run in herds, fly in flocks, swim in shoals. A do.p 
is happy if you let him come into the house, and 
sleep on the carpet where the family are assembled: 
all he asks is to be with you. 



224 SELF-CUL TURE. 

When we speak of the affections or social quali- 
ties, we include a great range of human feeling, ex- 
tending upward from a blind canine attachment to 
the loftiest piety and most unbounded charity. The 
following varieties of the social element of human 
affection may be specified : — 

1. Blind attachment, or mere adhesiveness, — the 
disposition to cling to some person as a support, like 
the vine to the oak, irrespective of any quality but 
strength. This is born of weakness and the need of 
dependence. 

2. Love, of Society. — We are all made social beings, 
needing the stimulus of companions and associates. 
This is the principle out of which civilization comes. 
The life of neighborhoods, towns, and cities depends 
on the fact that it is not good for man to be alone. 

3. Sympathy. — This makes us feel with those 
about us ; causes us to enter into their state of mind, 
and to rejoice with those who rejoice, or weep with 
those who weep. It is a quality which binds us to 
those near to us, producing kindliness, good-nature, 
pleasant manners, and good-will. But it does not 
do much for those at a distance, and may lead us to 
neglect them, by being so much absorbed with those 
close at hand. 

4. Friendship. — Here comes in the principle of 
selection and choice. Friendship begins very early, 
but in its lower stage shares the defects which 
belong to sympathy. Little children and young 
people have their friends, to whom they are ardently 



THE AFFECTIONS AND SOCIAL POWERS. 225 

attached for the time, whom they must see every- 
day, or be unhappy. But a short separation is often 
death to these juvenile attachments, which have no 
root in their objects, but are born from the instinct- 
ive need of loving some one. In its higher forms, 
friendship is one of the noblest attainments of men, 
as we see in such instances as that of Shakspeare 
and his unknown friend ; of Gustavus Adolphus and 
his chancellor Oxenstern ; of Tennyson and Hallam; 
of Charles Lamb and his companions ; of Goethe 
and Schiller ; Cowper and Mrs. Unwin ; and the 
immortal group which clustered around Dr. John- 
son. 

5. Home Affections. — These are the first and the 
last of human attachments ; they begin with the first 
opening of the soul, and they abide when all other 
feelings have faded away. Families are the unity 
of which society is composed, as tissue is made of 
cells, and matter of molecules. The attractions of 
parent and child, man and wife, brother and sister, 
are fundamental and primary. They are the deep 
roots from which social life is developed. According 
as the family is, so is the State. 

6. Benevolence,. — This differs from sympathy by 
being not a mere feeling, but a principle of action, 
and which applies equally to those near and distant, 
to those whom we like or those whom we dislike. 
It is, therefore, higher and larger than mere good- 
nature, and fills many gaps otherwise left empty 
We may connect with it pity, which is aroused by 

15 



226 SELF-CULTURE. 

the sorrows of others, even of those whom we do 
not know, but only hear of, 

7. Generosity or Sentiment. — Here comes a class 
of sentiments in which thought and feeling unite, 
such as patriotism, or the love of country ; loyalty 
to one's chief, one's order, one's associates ; the sense 
of honor ; the love of truth ; heroic devotion to a 
cause or a principle. These sentiments may easily 
run into sentimentalism, but they are to be distin- 
guished from it. They enter into all elevated social 
culture, and constitute a large part of the beauty 
and charm of human character. 

8. Finally, as the perfect development and out- 
come of all affection, we rise into universal love or 
charity, which includes love to God and love to 
man, and is opposed to all selfishness. This is the 
pure atmosphere in which alone the human soul 
breathes its highest life. This vitalizes and purifies 
all other love, and takes away evil passion, low 
desire, and self-will from the heart. 

The affections are in all languages compared with 
heat. Everywhere men speak of warm feelings, hot 
desires, the fires of love and hate, burning passions. 
These metaphors suggest the fact, that as heat is the 
great motor in the physical world, so desire and love 
are the great motors in the human world. As under 
the influence of summer heat plants unfold, so the 
soul of man develops in society. A solitary man 
cannot grow. The story of Kobinson Crusoe is an 
ingenious fable, which could scarcely be realized ; 



THE AFFECTIONS AND SOCIAL POWERS. 227 

for a man wholly alone would lose his ambition, and 
gradually only do what was necessary for mere 
existence. Out of the reach of humanity, never 
hearing the sweet music of human words, he would 
spend his time in longing for the divine gifts of 
society and earthly love, and look with horror on 
the most beautiful objects in nature around him. 
Indifference, inaction, stupor, come with solitude. 
We were obliged to give up the system of solitary 
confinement in our prisons because it speedily led 
to insanity and death. In the same way, the soli- 
tude of the early Christian hermits, who lived alone 
in caves and under trees, led to a kind of frenzy, 
and they were therefore collected into communities 
as early as the fourth century. Man cannot live on 
bread only, or on thought only, or on prayer only ; 
he also needs human society. 

Therefore as man is thus evidently a social animal, 
human life has been so arranged as to develop the 
social nature. Infancy and childhood are made 
dependent on parents ; and life is a perpetual inter- 
course of man with man. The family is the smallest 
social circle ; families arranged together make neigh- 
borhoods ; neighborhoods combined make town-r 
ships and communities; communities united make 
nations. 

The mere presence of human beings gives a cer- 
tain satisfaction. I love to go, sometimes, to New 
York, simply to walk in Broadway, to feel myself 
in the mighty current of human life which roars 



228 SELF-CUL TURE. 

unceasingly along that thoroughfare. On entering 
London, landing at Tower-stairs, in the midst of fog 
and dirt, a sudden exhilaration once seized me, which 
I could not explain till I found, on analyzing it, 
that it was the sense of this immense ocean of human 
life around me. Nature with no trace of human pres- 
ence is sublime, hut cold. But any remains of 
human art — a fragment of a ruined building, the 
arch of a bridge over a stream — at once warms up 
the scene with associations of man's thought and 
action. Standing on the shore, in the presence of 
the majestic ocean, if you find a child's playthings 
lying on the sand, a glow of tenderness is added to 
your sense of the sublime. This human sympathy 
is the electric chain with which we are all darkly 
bound. Even misanthropy is only philanthropy 
turned sour. A cold-blooded or hard-hearted man 
does not become a misanthrope. 

But this social instinct is not society, — it is only 
its foundation. Society means a great deal more 
than that. A great city is organized on the basis of 
competition rather than of co-operation. It shows 
us a mighty struggle for existence, in which the 
strong conquer, and the weak are crushed. It is a 
battle-field where courage, manliness, perseverance, 
quickness of faculty, mental energy, are developed, 
but where there is not necessarily any common life. 
Separation, exclusion, every man for himself, is the 
predominant character, as yet, of city life. There is 
no city thus far in which the people have much in 



THE AFFECTIONS AND SOCIAL POWERS. 229 

common. We in Boston have some things in com- 
mon, however. The Common itself, the Public 
Garden, the Public Library, the music, fireworks, 
exhibitions for the people on holidays, the public 
baths in summer, — all these are steps in the right 
direction. But a country town, where all know all, 
and participate in each other's feelings and wants, 
is, at present, a higher condition of social life than a 
city can be. I once saw a drop of water magnified 
a million times in the oxy-hydrogen microscope, and 
it appeared full of fierce creatures jerking violently 
about, butting against each other in every way, 
seeking to bite and devour each other. It seemed 
to me no bad representation of a great city. 

True society begins in the home. When two 
young people love each other, and marry, they restore 
the picture of the apostolic church. They are of 
one heart and one soul ; neither do they say that 
anything they possess is their own, but they have 
all things in common. Their mutual trust in each 
other, their entire confidence in each other, draws 
out all that is best in both. Love is the angel who 
rolls away the stone from the grave in which we 
bury our better nature, and it comes forth. Love 
makes all things new ; makes a new heaven and a 
new earth ; makes all cares light, all pain easy. It 
is the one enchantment of human life which realizes 
Fortunio's purse and Aladdin's palace, and turns 
the " Arabian Nights " into mere prose in compari- 
son. Think how this old story of love is repeated 



230 SELF-CULTURE. 

forever in all the novels and romances and poems, 
and how we never tire of reading about it ; and how, 
if there is to be a wedding in a church, all the 
neighbors go, just to have one look at two persons 
who are supposed, at least, to be in love, and so 
supremely happy. 

But this, also, is not perfect society. It is too 
narrow, too exclusive. It shows the power of devo- 
tion, trust, self- surrender, that there is in the human 
heart ; and it is also a prophecy of something larger 
that is to come. But it is at least a home, and 
before real society can come, true homes must come. 
As in a sheltered nook in the midst of the great sea 
of ice which rolls down from the summit of Mont 
Blanc is found a little green spot, full of tender 
flowers; so, in the shelter of home, in the warm 
atmosphere of household love, spring up the pure 
affections of parent and child ; father, mother, son, 
daughter ; of brothers and sisters. Whatever makes 
this insecure, and divorce frequent, makes of mar- 
riage, not a union for life, but an experiment which 
may be tried as often as we choose, and abandoned 
when we like. And this cuts up by the roots all the 
dear affections of home ; leaves children orphaned, 
destroys fatherly and motherly love, and is a virtual 
dissolution of society. I know the great difficulties 
of this question, and how much wisdom is required 
to solve them. But whatever weakens the perma- 
nence of marriage tends to dissolve society ; for per- 
manent homes are to the social state what the little 



THE AFFECTIONS AND SOCIAL POWERS. "231 

cells are to the body. They are the commencement 
of organic life, the centres from which all organiza- 
tion proceeds. 

But domestic life, even the best, does not make 
society. Homes and happy marriages are the foun- 
dations of society, but they are no more sufficient 
for it than the cellular tissue by itself is sufficient to 
make a body. Besides this, we need the blood per- 
petually pouring through every part, and the nervous 
fluid perpetually animating every part. Something 
is needed to unite these separate homes into a com- 
munity. What is the blood and what the nervous 
fluid which shall combine them into an organic 
whole ? 

The next step from the home in the social scale 
is the neighborhood. By neighbors we mean, not 
those who are near us in local position, but those 
who are near us in social affinity. Our real neigh- 
bors are not those who live in the next house or 
street, but those who are on the other side of the 
city, the country, the world, provided they are those 
who love us, and whom we love, — our friends, 
those who agree with us in a common purpose, who 
sympathize with us in our convictions, who are 
borne along by our side in the same current of 
spiritual life. 

Our real society is made up of our friends. As 
friendship declines, society disappears. I hear great 
complaint of the decay of society. It is said that 
there is no society now, only large parties. Young 



232 SELF-CULTURE. 

people meet together in expensive entertainments ; 
but where is that society which we all need, which 
consists of the coming together, in natural and easy 
relations, of old and young, men and women, persons 
of different tastes and various pursuits, coming to- 
gether to give and to take; where thought, wit, 
fancy, feeling, rule the hour ; where all is easy, un- 
artificial, and yet refined and pure ? 

Unity is necessary to constitute society. A ball 
is not society; a club of men or women is not 
society; parties, in which the same people meet 
over and over again, are poor society. That is the 
penalty of exclusiveness ; it excludes the new life 
it needs. Exclusive circles are very stupid and 
tiresome ones. It takes all sorts of people to make 
good society, no less than to make a world. " Our 
set " is always the word for a meeting where one is 
sure to be very much bored. 

The great queens of society — for society, like a 
beehive, is always governed by a woman — knew 
this well. Nothing less aristocratic, less exclusive, 
than the salons of Mme. Recamier and the other 
French leaders of society in the last century. The 
secret is to bring together people who take an 
interest in each other, people who are interesting 
to each other. But no one is really interesting 
except the man who is alive, whose soul is on fire 
with thought, purpose, love. If you can find such 
persons as this, you may dispense with your ice 
cream and oysters, your footmen and music. I 



THE AFFECTIONS AND SOCIAL POWERS. 233 

recollect such a series of receptions, given years ago 
in this city by a lady. Her means were small, her 
rooms poor; she offered no entertainment but a 
glass of water ; but she knew so many interesting 
people, that you were sure to find in her rooms the 
most charming society imaginable. 

Generosity and tact are also necessary to make 
good society. One of the greatest social powers is 
that of drawing out other people. Some women 
have this power in a high degree. By some strange 
tact they perceive what is the best thing in us, and 
by some subtle attraction they put us on our best 
behavior. We do not see how it is done. We 
merely find ourselves very comfortable, very con- 
tented, and talking our very best. The art of draw- 
ing out others is much higher than any power of 
display. They say of one of the queens of French 
society that, after she became old and poor, and had 
gone into a convent, she was still visited by all the 
brightest and best people of Paris. I do not think 
it was out of gratitude, friendship, or kindness that 
they went. No ; but because she still had the 
faculty of drawing them out, and making them con- 
tented with themselves. This is generosity and 
insight joined in one ; this is the charm which age 
cannot wither nor custom stale. 

We see, then, how much of love, sympathy, 
generosity, self-forgetfulness, go to a right social 
development. Put together a company of egotistical 
and self-conceited people, and, no matter how bril- 



2 34 SELF-CUL TURK 

liant they are, no matter how much they know, 
they have a wretched time. But the moment the 
early Christians came together, they were of one 
heart and one soul. They had all things in common. 
They knew how to give and take. They did not 
meet to show off their own abilities. 

Carlyle says of Eichter, the German poet, that 
ihe aristocracy of the little town of Hof excluded 
him from its circles. He did not belong to their 
set. " So," adds the biographer, " as he could not 
be admitted to the West End of Hof, he was obliged 
to take up his quarters at the west end of the 
universe, where, indeed, he had a splendid recep- 
tion." 

The Christian Church has always furnished good 
society to its members. To be sure, in a morbid 
state of mind, it has sometimes denounced society 
altogether, and recommended its children to turn 
monks and nuns, and live alone, and has called this 
religion. Sometimes it has denounced innocent 
amusements, and made all social life to resolve 
itself into prayer-meetings and the singing of hymns. 
But, on the other hand, to how many lonely persons, 
to how many poor and forlorn souls, to how many 
weighed down by sorrow, has it not brought sym- 
pathy, friendship, and a helping hand ! In many 
places, all the society there is, is that which is made 
by the churches. Men and women go in as stran- 
gers, and find themselves presently brothers and 
sisters. They find a kindly atmosphere, good work 



THE AFFECTIONS AND SOCIAL POWERS. 235 

to do, friendly faces to cheer them, and the all- 
pervading sense of the highest truths ; for there 
is in every church a basis of serious conviction and 
serious purpose, and without this society becomes 
very trivial and empty. Do you not notice the 
difference in this respect in different places ? I go 
to some homes, and immediately I find people ready 
to speak of something important, — their minds are 
interested in some question of morals, intellect, 
politics, religion, manners, art, or literature. Then 
the conversation becomes at once interesting. But 
when people meet with empty minds, people who 
live only for amusement, not for anything serious, 
how commonplace and how superficial is the talk ! 
Even when there is talent, culture, and knowledge, 
if there is not earnestness, it does not go to the roots 
of things, — it is unsatisfactory. 

We need all kinds of society, — literary, artistic, 
political, neighborly ; but withal we need church 
life and the church home. 

Both thought and work tend to throw men on 
themselves, and to develop individual life ; therefore 
the social element needs a more direct culture as 
man advances. Civilization develops thought and 
power, more than heart. Highly cultivated people 
are often cold, intellectual people reserved, men of 
energy hard. But sympathy and sentiment ought 
to be expressed as well as felt, and so every one 
enjoys the impulsive warmth of the Latin races 
more than our cool Saxon ways. No matter how 



236 SELF-CULTURE. 

much a Northern man feels, he is ashamed to show 
it ; but an Italian will shed tears openly, and think 
it no discredit. Why not ? The old Greeks were 
not afraid to shed tears, and if Achilles and Aga- 
memnon wept, why may not we ? Why not cry, if 
you feel like crying, just as well as to laugh when 
you like laughing? A man is no less manly for 
showing his feelings, if they are right ones. 

I read a certain newspaper every week, and it is 
a very good newspaper, too, but it has one foolish 
notion. It is afraid of sentiment. It seems to think 
there is nothing so bad as sentiment. But sentiment 
is nothing but thought blended with feeling ; thought 
made affectionate, sympathetic, moral. Since God 
gave us sentiment as well as thought, since he saw 
fit to make us with hearts as well as heads, why 
need we be afraid of sentiment ? The heart is often 
wiser than the head, and the worst heresies have 
come from speculation, not from love. Let us not 
be ashamed of our affections, for these are the best 
gifts of heaven. Without them our life, as Cicero 
has said, is not really living. But what moments 
will compare with those in which persons become 
really intimate with each other ; when the barriers 
of reserve are removed ; when the deepest thoughts 
are kindled by the magnetic touch of a common 
thought ; when all that is highest within the soul is 
made to flow freely like brooks in June, leaping 
down the side of the mountain! Only in such 
hours does man become really himself, seeing and 



THE AFFECTIONS AND SOCIAL POWERS. 237 

feeling what he realty is. Such communion lifts 
him above his average days of mere routine into a 
better sphere. 

All the forms of affection, except the highest, are 
liable to go astray, to run into excess, to fall into 
abuse. Friendship may be too engrossing; sym- 
pathy may make us unjust to the absent for the 
sake of those present ; benevolence and pity, unless 
guided by judgment, may aggravate the evils they 
seek to relieve ; loyalty often leads to partisanship 
and bitter sectarianism ; sentiment may pass into 
sentimentalism ; unintelligent reverence produces 
the dreadful woes and wrongs of superstition. An 
ignorant piety torments men with fears, or hardens 
the heart to those who are thought to be infidels. 
Therefore all these affections need to be guided 
and regulated. This is their education. 

Thus guided or illuminated, they become an im- 
mense power, — a great force. Light guides, but 
love moves. Love is the motor which carries man- 
kind onward. The education of the social nature 
consists in changing selfish affections into generous 
affections, blind feelings into intelligent attachments, 
and the passive emotions of sympathy into the active 
love of benevolence. 

The first step of this progress is from mere sym- 
pathy to thoughtfulness. It consists in not merely 
feeling for others, but thinking for them. 

An emotion of sympathy, unless it passes into 
thoughtful goodness, profits little. What men need 



238 SELF-CULTURE. 

is not merely the goodness which feels for thein, but 
the goodness which will think for them, — which 
puts itself in their place, considers their wants, 
anticipates their necessity, and provides for it. 
What a blessing is a considerate person, and how 
inconsiderate much goodness is ! On occasions of 
great calamities, we think for others as well as feel 
for them. We send money, clothing, tools, furniture, 
food, — just what they want, to those whose homes 
are desolated by fire or famine or storms. But 
how inconsiderate is our average charity, which 
lavishes money on the poor, but will not think for 
them ! The aid given every year in this city, much 
of which only creates paupers, if wisely directed, 
would put an end to pauperism, and greatly relieve 
poverty. Thought added to love makes real benevo- 
lence, and educates the character of the donor. If 
God loves a cheerful giver, I am sure he also loves 
a thoughtful giver. How grateful we all are to 
those who show that they have put thought into 
their love for us, anticipating our need, penetrating 
our obscure misery, and leading us up into light 
and peace, which otherwise our darkened and 
troubled soul could never find ! 

To educate the heart, one must be willing to go 
out of himself and to come into living contact with 
others. It is not enough to think for others, or 
feel for others, we must feel with them and think 
with them. If we would drive selfishness out of 
our heart, we must enter into communion with our 
fellow-men. 



THE AFFECTIONS AND SOCIAL POWERS. 239 

u Not what we give, but what we share, 
For the gift without the giver is bare." 

You cannot make a fire with a single stick, nor 
can you warm your heart by solitary efforts or soli- 
tary prayers. This is the mistake of the religious 
people who are always analyzing their own motives 
to see if there is any real love in their hearts. Such 
a process would drive all love out of the heart of 
an angel. It is the mistake also of those who culti- 
vate their tastes until they become indifferent to 
man, while they admire culture, caring not for the 
diamond, but only for its polish. I have known 
literary men, scientific men, and artists, who had 
cut themselves off from all social sympathy with 
their kind, as really as the old anchorites who lived 
in the caves of the Thebaid. They were hermits in 
Boston or New York. I am inclined to think that 
the Church may again become the centre of a new 
society, which shall unite rich and poor, the wise 
and the uninstructed ; which shall furnish means 
of culture, works of art, pleasant society, innocent 
amusement, mutual help. From whence else is a 
renewed society to come ? No other root goes so 
deep as religion into the human soul ; may not the 
tree which rises from it again bear the blossoms and 
fruit of a better civilization ? The Christian Church 
has always been the home of literature and art. It 
preserved in its libraries the knowledge of antiquity. 
It created schools of architecture, sculpture, poetry, 
music, painting. I think it will again flower out 



240 SELF-CUL.TURE. 

into beauty, and bear the fruits of a better civiliza- 
tion ; for the root is still by the waters of life, and 
fresh shoots are always coming from this ancient 
trunk. 

The essence of Christianity, according to the New 
Testament, is love. This is the centre and axis of 
the Christian life, the one thing needful. Jesus 
declares that the first commandment is to love God ; 
the second, essentially like it, is to love man ; and 
that on these two, as pivots, hang all the law and 
the prophets. John declares that he who loveth, 
dwells in God and God in him ; and that love to 
God and to our neighbor go necessarily together. 
Paul declares that a faith which can work the 
mightiest miracle is good for nothing apart from 
love. The power of faith in Christ is, that it 
creates this love in the soul, that it inspires at once 
a divine and human affection. It brings God so 
near, shows him so closely to us as a father, that we 
are made able to trust ourselves wholly to him, and 
to be happy in the sense of his presence. Then this 
sense of the infinite tenderness descends into every 
part of our life, and makes all things new. It creates 
a new heaven and a new earth. Sanctified by this 
sunny atmosphere of a simple piety and a simple 
charity, heaven is here, the beginning of the heaven 
which is to come. 

Heaven in Scripture is represented as a society. 
And when I think of it, I not only think of it as a 
condition where we shall know and do more, but 



THE AFFECTIONS AND SOCIAL POWERS. 241 

where we shall be in fuller and larger sympathy 
with others. There the poor hearts frozen up and 
undeveloped in this life shall expand in a warm, 
sunny atmosphere of love ! There those who have 
been misunderstood and misrepresented in this world 
shall find themselves well-known by God and the 
angels of God ! There those who have never been 
able to express themselves, who have been deprived 
of the gift of utterance, shall know how to talk 
without words ; like the stars, " which have neither 
speech nor language, yet their voice is heard ! " 
There we shall enter into a communion so intimate, 
that all which the best hours of this life have given 
shall seem as nothing to that perfect blending of 
thought and love. 



XI. 



THE ORGAN OF REVERENCE, AND 
ITS CULTIVATION. 



XL 



THE ORGAN OF REVERENCE, AND 
ITS CULTIVATION. 



PHRENOLOGISTS say that on the very sum- 
mit of the brain is an organ, which they call 
the organ of veneration, which impels men to look 
up and adore higher beings ; which prompts to the 
worship of God ; which inspires reverence for par- 
ents, superiors, and elders ; and which is, in their 
opinion, the religious organ. Whether such an 
organ exists, or whether it does not exist, there is 
no doubt that there is such a tendency in the hu- 
man soul, — a tendency to look up with reverence 
to things higher, nobler, and better than we are our- 
selves. 

The nature of man, full of antagonisms, has, with 
its self-esteem, its self-reliance, its self-will, also an 
opposite disposition : one which leads one to esteem 
others more than one's self; to pay homage to a su- 
perior virtue and a profounder knowledge. If it is 
pleasant to think well of one's self, it is more de- 
lightful to think better of another. The very same 
person who at one time seems to esteem himself, in 



246 SELF-CULTURE. 

his egotism, better than all the rest of the world, has 
also his moments of enthusiastic reverence for noble 
and generous souls, and forgets himself altogether in 
a joyful hero-worship. 

The tendency to reverence is, therefore, natural to 
man. It is one of the most universal of all human 
tendencies ; it runs upward into the purest piety ; it 
sinks downward into the darkest superstition. It is 
a sail, filled with the winds of heaven, to carry 
us forward to a better land and time; or it is an 
anchor holding by the black soil of past abuses and 
corruptions, and so keeping the human mind back 
from all improvement. Let us, therefore, consider 
it in these three forms : its natural action, or normal 
state ; its unnatural action, or abnormal state ; its 
spiritual action, or higher state. 

How lovely is reverence in children and young 
people, and how disagreeable the opposite ! To look 
up, submissively trusting in the superior wisdom 
and goodness of those older than himself, elevates 
the child. Every one is raised by submission to 
higher worth. A man in the water, who cannot 
swim, if he tries to lift himself up out of the water, 
will be drowned ; but if he will sink low down into 
it, he will float. In this world, those who are will- 
ing to sink will float ; and the saying of Jesus comes 
true in many ways, " He that exalteth himself shall 
be abased, but he that humbleth himself shall be 
exalted." The modesty born of reverence seems 
natural to youth. I know that in this I am contra- 



REVERENCE, AND ITS CULTIVATION 247 

dieting a great master of human nature, the German 
writer, Goethe. In one of his books he represents 
his hero visiting an educational institution. Seeing 
the boys standing erect, in various attitudes, he asks 
the meaning of these positions. The teacher re- 
plies, that " Nature has given many endowments to 
children, which the teacher has only to develop ; but 
one thing the child does not bring into the world 
with him, and yet it is on this one thing that all 
depends for making man wholly a man. This one 
thing," he continues, " is reverence." He then 
goes on to speak of the three kinds of reverence, 
which must be joined into one to produce the 
highest quality. The first of these three rever- 
ences is reverence for what is above us, especially 
for God, who images himself in parents and superi- 
ors. The second is respect for our equals ; the 
third, or the Christian reverence, is respect and 
honor for our inferiors. " These," he continues, " are 
not based on fear, as some think ; for fear and rev- 
erence are wholly different. Fear drives us away 
from its object, but reverence attracts us toward it. 
To fear," he adds, " is easy, but painful ; to rever- 
ence is difficult, but satisfactory. Man does not 
willingly submit to reverence : it is a higher sense, 
which is communicated to his nature, and only in 
some peculiarly favored individuals does it unfold 
itself spontaneously." 

With all deference to this great thinker, I must 
prefer the phrenological observers, and assume, with 



248 SELF-CUL TURE. 

them, that reverence is natural to mankind. It is 
the crown of the moral nature. It is, perhaps, the 
last faculty to be fully developed in man ; but it 
appears in innocent childhood, in the modesty of 
youth, and gives to both no small part of their 
charm. It attracts the young to the old, the igno- 
rant to the wise, the timid to the brave, even the 
sinful to the pure and noble. So it tends to ele- 
vate by bringing us under the influence of those 
nobler and better than ourselves. The man who 
chooses to be with his inferiors is degraded ; to love 
to be with our superiors elevates us. A great poet 
has said : — 

" Philip has that 
Of inborn meanness in him that he loves not 
The company of equals or superiors ; 
Never at ease except he struts the best 
And crows the loudest of the company." 

There is another quality in reverence which is 
very noticeable. It gives a sense of what is har- 
monious, fit, and suitable. It perceives everywhere 
what is becoming. It opposes whatever is abrupt 
and discordant. An egotistical person, who respects 
no one but himself, is a jar and discord. He pushes 
forward his own will, notion, and purpose, in season 
and out of season. But he who has reverence fol- 
lows the higher law which gives order to all things, 
and feels the beauty of that universal harmony 
which descends from God. He obeys the spirit of 
God in promoting order and beauty in all things. 



REVERENCE, AND ITS CULTIVATION 249 

Therefore it is that Shakspeare calls reverence 
" the angel of the world." 

" Reverence, 

That angel of the world, doth make distinction 

Of place 'twixt high and low." 

The phrenologists, we have seen, make it the re- 
ligious organ. I think it one organ of religion, but 
not the only source of religion. It leads to worship, 
devotion, and the exercise of piety. But piety and 
devotion constitute only one part of religion. Those 
who have a great deal of this lovely natural tend- 
ency within them enjoy prayer, enjoy worship, en- 
joy religious books, religious hymns, and religious 
meetings. But this is only one part of religion. 
The sentiment of piety is sweet and holy, but re- 
ligion is also action and thought. It rests on a deep 
conviction of the reality of God's being, of duty, of 
immortality. It is also doing good works. We 
must not suppose that one cannot be religious who 
has not, by nature, a love for worship, for religion 
comes to us in many ways. 

A person to whom it is not natural to look up in 
adoration, or to pray the prayer of sentiment, and 
has no tendency to natural piety, may yet be really a 
Christian. He may come to God through convic- 
tion and conscience ; he may pray to God because 
he sees that prayer helps him, gives him strength to 
do his duty, to resist temptation. His prayers will 
not be long; but, then, Jesus did not ask us to 
make long prayers, but to make real prayers. Five 



250 SELF-CULTURE. 

words from a deep conviction are better than fifty 
said by rote, or coming merely from a religious 
sentimentalism. If you have a good deal of natural 
piety, be thankful; but if you have it not, be 
not discouraged. There are other ways of finding 
God. 

But this faculty of reverence has also its unnat- 
ural, abnormal tendencies. Its unnatural action is 
superstition. The only thing which deserves rever- 
ence is spirit ; God as spirit, and God's spirit de- 
scending into man and nature as truth and love, as 
justice and heroism. But as God's spirit and man's 
spirit are seen and known through some outward 
form, we often confound these, and reverence the 
form instead of the spirit, the body instead of the 
soul. This is idolatry. Because God comes to us 
in nature, in the sun and stars, in the storm and 
calm, in the events of life, ethnic nations have wor- 
shipped the sun, the fire, the sky, the thunder, the 
ocean. So, in Christianity, men have had a super- 
stitious reverence for forms ; they have regarded 
them not as means, but as ends. They reverence 
the externals of religion, instead of its inner life. 

Thus men worship the bones of martyrs, sacred 
pictures, sacred places. Thus, in Naples, they wor- 
ship St. Januarius ; in Bologna, St. Petronius. Thus, 
in Jerusalem, they worship the sacred fire, and 
trample each other to death in trying to procure it. 
Thus, Protestants worship blindly the Sabbath, the 
Bible, the sacraments, as though these were holy in 



REVERENCE, AND ITS CULTIVATION. 251 

themselves, instead of being good only as they can 
make men good. 

So sensible a writer as Miss Yonge intimates that 
it is just possible that an unbaptized child may be 
damned because that rite has been neglected. But 
Eobertson says that such a view of baptism makes 
of it a charm to save the child from God, instead of 
a sacrament to bring it to God. 

Such is the power of association, that whatever is 
associated with our highest hours and best feelings 
becomes itself an object of admiration and venera- 
tion. We read in the Bible that the brazen serpent, 
which Moses had lifted up in the wilderness, had 
been preserved to the time of Hezekiah ; that is, 
about seven centuries. What a sacred relic it was, 
and how worthy of preservation ! If modern Chris- 
tians had only such a relic as this, — so authentic 
and holy, — how would they prize it ! But Hez- 
ekiah found that it had become an object of wor- 
ship, therefore he broke it in pieces, and called it 
" Nehushtan," which means " a piece of brass." This 
must have greatly shocked the feelings of the Israel- 
ites. This was, indeed, a sacred relic, and seemed 
worthy of veneration. Think of his destroying it 
and calling it a piece of brass ! 

So the Jews felt when Jesus said, " The Sabbath 
is made for man, not man for the Sabbath." So many 
persons felt when a modern writer suggested that 
there might be piano-fortes, or their analogons, in 
heaven. But these things must be said in order to 



252 SELF-CULTURE. 

bring us out of a merely sentimental habit of relig- 
ious formalism to the worship of spirit and reality. 
When people adore a stone or a piece of brass, 
and call it God ; when they worship a piece of 
bread, and call it God; when they sanctify ancient 
forms, liturgies, costume, candles, crosses, and think 
them sacred, — some one must break these idols in 
pieces, and say, " They are Nehushtan, — a piece of 
brass." 

The habits of our ancestors led them to regard 
with reverence the house of worship. The building 
where the church assembled came itself to be called 
the church, just as the body in which the man 
dwells is regarded as the man. This reverence for 
the house of worship is passing away, and we now 
often miss the devout stillness and quiet which 
used to mark a congregation assembled to worship. 
Travellers say that you may go into a Turkish 
mosque full of people, and so intense is the stillness, 
that, if you were to close your eyes, you might sup- 
pose yourself alone. I confess I prefer that extreme 
to the other. I do not like to see people whisper- 
ing, assuming careless attitudes, or reading during a 
religious service. I do not like a noisy introduction 
to public worship. This is not from my regard to a 
sacredness inherent in the place, but from a sense of 
fitness. You would not go laughing into a house 
of mourning, much as you may believe that death 
comes from God as a blessing. You would not 
dance at a funeral, nor pray in a ball-room. There 



REVERENCE, AND ITS CULTIVATION. 253 

is a fitness in things, and one is disturbed by any- 
such incongruity in the house of worship. 

Let a church be like a home, but like one where 
the Great Father comes to meet his children, and 
where awe and veneration mingle with love, to 
make joy more sweet and more profound. The 
associations of a place influence the mind. These 
associations are helps to us. Why do you love to 
go to the place in the woods where you last saw 
your friend, and talked with him ? Because the 
associations which surround you there bring back 
your friend to you, and you seem to be once more 
together. So when people enter the church, where 
their hearts have been lifted to God, and filled with 
a new purpose of obedience, where the hymns and 
prayers have taken them up to a higher plane of 
thought, they are, by the very associations of the 
place, led into a devout frame, and it is not good to 
have these associations disturbed. 

The highest action of this sentiment of reverence 
is to feel the spirit of God in all things ; to feel God 
in nature, history, providence, our own lives, and in 
all the good and great souls who have lived. It is to 
be filled with awe, wonder, and love, in view of the 
greatness and goodness everywhere. It is to cherish 
a habit of looking upward, and seeing what is noble 
and good in all things. 

This elevates the character, gives dignity and joy 
to life, and produces that charming serenity, that 
gracious beauty, which softens all hearts. In Jesus 



254 SELF-CULTURE. 

Christ we see this spirit in its highest form. He 
was a reformer ; he denounced the superstitions of 
his day. He was called a Sabbath-breaker, because 
he healed the sick on the Sabbath, and walked with 
his disciples in the fields ; he denounced the men 
thought most holy, the Scribes and Pharisees ; but 
he was full of this deep reverence for God, as his 
Father, and the Father of all. He saw a divine 
goodness in all men and in all things. So he had 
respect, not only for the great men and the prophets, 
but for the poor, the low, the despised. He intro- 
duced into the world that new form of reverence, — 
reverence for things below us ; reverence for little 
children, for the ignorant, the poor, the suffering ; 
yes, reverence for the soul of man even when most 
degraded by sin. This is the foundation of true 
democracy ; the only basis for any real equality. 
Christianity makes human equality real; not by 
destroying the differences among men, but by teach- 
ing the good to seek and save the evil ; the wise to 
instruct the ignorant ; the rich to care for the poor ; 
the strong to uphold the weak. This reverence for 
all men, because all are G-od's children, is the highest 
attainment of man. To look up and adore is easy ; 
but to look down and respect what is below us is 
far more difficult. But this spirit Christ has im- 
parted to the world. 

" He who loveth not his brother whom he hath 
seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen ? " 
says the Apostle. " He who reverences not the good- 



REVERENCE, AND ITS CULTIVATION. 255 

ness he has seen, how can he reverence that which 
he has not seen ? " He who despises man will de- 
spise God. Irreverence toward God often comes 
from disrespect toward man. 

The young people of our time are said to be want- 
ing in reverence. They are often generous and 
sympathizing ; they are true and honorable. This 
class of virtues they believe in. But they do not 
believe in those born of reverence. They have some- 
what lost the old respect for woman. They con- 
sider it in good taste to be rude td ladies, and to 
treat them as comrades; and ladies submit to be 
so treated. They do not rise up to honor the hoary 
head. They keep their seats in the arm-chair when 
their father or mother comes in. In my youth, the 
form which self-conceit took was admiration for 
one's self as a person of genius or talent before any 
evidence of that fact appeared. Now, the conceit 
which boys have of themselves is that they are 
singularly manly, heroic, and powerful. Then, they 
adored talent ; now they respect force. This is en- 
couraged by the boys' newspapers and story-books, 
which teach that if. a boy will defy all laws, be 
disrespectful to his parents, and run away from 
home, he will certainly become an eminent person 
and meet with much success. So we see little boys 
affecting manliness by smoking cigars in the streets, 
by brutal manners, by airs of independence, and by 
general disrespect to their elders and superiors. For 
this reason they should be taught the beauty there 



256 SELF-CULTURE. 

is in good manners, and that without modesty there 
is no real manliness. 

"I was born in an unlucky time," said a lady. 
" When I was young, I was obliged to respect and 
obey my parents, and now I am obliged to respect 
and obey my children." An irreverent age is want- 
ing in the highest sentiment of man. To " look up " 
is the noblest of all powers. The small egotism 
which loves to look down on others wilts the soul. 

During the Middle Ages the influence of the 
Church was so great that it produced an excess of 
reverence. You see this in the pictures before 
Eaphael. Compare, for example, a "Crucifixion" 
by these early masters with one by Eubens. In the 
last, all is natural and free : each man is acting as 
he would in actual life. The Magdalen, dissolved 
in tears, embraces the feet of her friend, her fulness 
of life contrasting with the leaden death of Christ. 
The disciples, in every attitude of disappointment 
and despair, stand around. The Eoman soldier, in 
the most business-like way, is striking his spear 
into the side of Jesus. The centurion, on his horse, 
is studying with deep interest the face of Jesus. 
But a mediaeval artist, or a pre-Eaphaelite imitator, 
would make all their faces full of the same awe- 
struck reverence. The cruel soldier would be strik- 
ing his spear as though he were saying a prayer. 
The centurion would hang down his head like a 
bulrush. So mediaeval piety turned all human life 
into awe, wonder, and fear. Everything connected 



REVERENCE, AND ITS CULTIVATION. 257 

with religion was venerable. It was sacrilege not 
to reverence churches, masses, saints, relics, as much 
as God himself. 

From all this there has, come a reaction. Few 
things now seem sacred. The awe and mystery has 
been brushed away from human life. Eeason, sci- 
ence, criticism, have carried their torches, their cal- 
cium lamps, their argand burners, into every recess 
of the soul. So reverence has died out of the heart. 

No, it has not ! Nothing which God puts into 
man can ever pass away. What he gives, he gives 
forever. I see and admit the apparent irreverence 
of our day. I lament that young men and women 
are not more modest, and that no sense of sacred 
associations seems left to them. They have nothing 
holy, — no holy Bible, no holy Sabbath, nothing- 
sacred, even in the Gospels, or the Christ. The 
time has come in which men peep and scrutinize 
over the grave of their mother. We wish now to 
know everything. But I think that knowledge 
will awaken reverence once more. The greatest 
and wisest of men have always bowed down in awe 
before the mysteries of creation. The lamp of sci- 
ence reveals the immense and inscrutable wonders 
which surround what we know. Egotism, conceit, 
and vanity come when we know a little ; when we 
know more, awe and reverence return. Therefore I 
believe that knowledge and science is creating an- 
other reverence, surely higher and better than that 
for forms and ceremonies, — a reverence for all reality. 

17 



258 SELF-CUL TURE. 

To educate the sense of reverence we must once 
more recognize its beauty and nobility. We must 
see that, without it, the best charm of life is gone. 
He who cannot look up to something better than 
himself acquires that cynical and contemptuous 
spirit which is so odious and so repulsive. The 
sense of reverence needs to be educated, and this is 
the truth in the remark of Goethe. It is cultivated 
by looking up and not down ; by choosing for our 
associates the best and wisest men and women ; by 
seeking for companions the intelligent, the generous, 
and the good. It is cultivated by looking for the 
good in men and things, rather than evil ; by seek- 
ing truth rather than error ; by reading noble books 
in which this spirit prevails ; by choosing the com- 
pany in which serious and noble things are treated 
seriously. In such society the best part of our na- 
ture grows, while, among the flippant and the frivol- 
ous, we also become small and empty. It is good 
to believe in heroes and heroism, in saints and mar- 
tyrs. It is good to read and study the lives of the 
generous and disinterested, the pure in heart, those 
who suffer for righteousness' sake. Avoid the at- 
mosphere which is full of sneers at generosity, which 
doubts sentiment, which distrusts conscience, which 
calls all religion hypocrisy. Those who try to exalt 
themselves by criticising and finding fault with that 
which others reverence, become very small and very 
mean. Fault-finding is about the poorest, as well as 
the easiest, work one can do. Look for truth, for 



REVERENCE, AND ITS CULTIVATION. 259 

goodness, for honesty, and you will find these. It 
may seem very smart and very witty to speak irrev- 
erently of parents, elders, the past, of religion, the 
church, the Bible ; but you have to pay a heavy 
price for that wit. Your mind grows flippant and 
poor. That which comes out of your mouth defiles 
you. This is the harm of profanity. It does not 
injure God to take his name in vain, but it injures 
you. Every time you utter an oath you are laying 
another stone on the wall between yourself and heav- 
enly things. You are degrading your nature, dark- 
ening your mind, making faith in things unseen 
more difficult. But all serious and earnest conver- 
sation on high themes lifts us up nearer to that of 
which we think and speak. 

He who closes the door in his heart against the 
noble, the great, the wonderful, the venerable, has 
shut himself out from the best joy of life. There is 
nothing better can enter into the human soul than 
reverence for high things. This sentiment lifts us 
above ourselves, brings us into the heavenly world, 
and admits us to the society of angels and archan- 
gels, dominions and powers, seraphim and cherubim. 

He who believes in goodness has the essence of 
all faith. He is a man " of cheerful yesterdays and 
confident to-morrows." 

This faith in goodness, this reverence for the di- 
vine in nature and man, is what we need. Whoever 
can give us this is our best benefactor. Whoever 
takes it away is our chief enemy. The road which 



260 SELF-CULTURE. 

goes upward toward God, beauty, truth, heaven, is 
the path of faith and worship. That which goes 
downward is the way of self-conceit, of contempt, 
of cynicism, of scorn. Let our prayer be that we 
unlearn contempt and learn to adore. Let us pray 
to the Most High God, to him who wrapped the 
cloud of infancy around us and communed with us 
in the undisturbed simplicity of childhood ; to him 
who from the anarchy of dreams, with punctual care 
and touch as gentle as the coming of dawn, restores 
us every day to light and reason. Call on him in 
your weakness and say : — 

" Soul of our souls, and safeguard of the world, 
Sustain, thou only canst, the sick of heart. 
Eestore their languid spirits, and recall 
Their lost affections unto thee and thine." 



XII. 
EDUCATION BY MEANS OF MONEY. 



XII. 

EDUCATION BY MEANS OF MONEY. 



THE desire for wealth is nearly universal, and 
has been so from the earliest times. Money 
represents everything which may be purchased. To 
be rich means to be able to have a comfortable house 
in a healthy situation, with plenty of sunshine and 
air ; to have good books to read, fine pictures to 
look at ; to go to the mountains or to the sea in 
summer ; to travel in Europe ; to have time and 
leisure for study; good society, pleasant acquaint- 
ances, recreation of all sorts, — horses, sail-boats, 
and the like. It represents, also, the power of help- 
ing the poor, giving to hospitals and other charities, 
building model lodging-houses, saving the Old South 
Church, paying the debt of the Young Men's Chris- 
tian Union, establishing reform schools, founding 
professorships in colleges or industrial schools where 
boys and girls can be taught how to make their liv- 
ing. He who possesses money has potentially in 
his possession everything which may be bought with 
money. We know that knowledge is power; money 



2 64 SELF-CUL TURE. 

also is power. It is influence, it is distinction, and 
it seems to have in itself all earthly possibilities. 

But not quite all ; not the best things. Some 
things escape its power. All that is purchasable it 
possesses, actually or potentially ; but some things 
are not purchasable. You cannot buy health, genius, 
knowledge, character, nobleness of soul, friendship or 
love, with money. And when you desire, most of 
all, any of the unpurchasable articles, money loses 
its power. A steamer in the mid-Atlantic en- 
countered a storm, and was so shattered that all 
who could, took to the boats. One man, left on 
deck, offered tens of thousands of dollars in gold for 
a place in the boat, and, being refused, dashed the 
money down, where it was kicked aside as worthless 
by those who were trying to find some way of safety. 
Any higher love drives the love of money out of the 
heart. The love of art, the enthusiasm for knowl- 
edge, an interest in science, or religious devotion, 
expels the greed of gain. Agassiz refused the largest 
pecuniary offers for his services, saying he "could 
not afford the time to make money." Turner, though 
loving wealth, loved his art more, and often refused 
the highest prices for his pictures, because he could 
not bear to part with them. Much as we may de- 
sire the power which belongs to wealth, there is that 
which none of us would sell at any price. Maturin 
wrote a story, called " Melmoth," based on this idea. 
Melmoth had sold himself to the devil for unlimited 
wealth and power, and also on the condition that, if 



EDUCATION BY MEANS OF MONEY. 265 

he could find any one to take his place, he could 
himself escape at last. So he seeks shipwrecked 
and starving mariners, those who are about to be 
burnt alive by the Inquisition, and offers them life, 
safety, riches, all earthly joy, if they will sell their 
soul. All refuse ; no one is found, in all the wide 
earth, plunged in any such depth of anguish or de- 
spair as to be willing to exchange places with him. 
And I am inclined to think that this represents 
truly what would probably be the result. We do 
sell our souls, blindly and ignorantly, every day, for 
a much smaller price ; but we would not do this 
deliberately for any kind of compensation. 

The Bible is often quoted as though it said that 
" Money is the root of all evil." What it really 
says is, that " The love of money is the root of all 
evil." Money, in itself, is neither good nor bad ; it 
is good or bad according as it is sought for in right 
or wrong ways ; as it is used wisely or unwisely ; 
lavished foolishly, or hoarded meanly ; squandered 
where it does harm, or bestowed where it does good. 
It is nothing in itself, but the best thing or the worst 
thing, according as it is treated. 

In the curious story, by Chamisso, called " Peter 
Schlemihl," there is a rich man, who has by his side, 
always, a demon in waiting, who takes from his 
pocket anything his master wishes. The master 
wishes for a telescope to examine a distant ship ; 
the demon supplies him with one. He says, " It is 
very hot ; I wish we had a tent." A tent instantly 



266 SELF-CULTURE. 

emerges from the capacious pocket of the convenient 
servant. Finally, the master wishes for carriages 
and horses to convey the whole party to the city, 
and the demon takes from his pocket as many as 
are necessary. It is evident that, with such an at- 
tendant, one would have no use for money, for he 
could have everything at once, without the trouble 
of buying it. 

Money, taken in the largest sense, as the repre- 
sentative of all kinds of property, is one of the 
greatest means of human education. Accumulated 
capital means progress ; constitutes the difference 
between the savage and the partly civilized condi- 
tions. Property, to exist, must be protected by the 
community from violence. Thus law becomes su- 
perior to force. In order that amy one should hold 
his property securely, all must be defended. The 
weakest child, the feeblest woman or old man, holds 
his property as safely to-day, in Christian countries, 
as, in the Middle Ages, the baron, living in his 
castle of stone, and behind iron gates, held his. 
Thus the accumulation of property or capital has 
been gradually extending the reign of law, and 
beating back the reign of force. This, already, is a 
great education to a community; for it causes all 
men to feel the presence of law, as an invisible but 
ever-active power, ready to defend right and punish 
wrong. 

Moreover, the presence of capital, or accumulated 
property, in a community, means more of the neces- 



EDUCATION BY MEANS OF MONEY. 267 

saries and comforts of life, — not for the rich only, 
but for all persons. Capital which is hoarded does 
not accumulate ; to increase, it must be used. It 
cannot be used without furnishing employment and 
wages to large numbers of persons. Their labor 
creates more capital, which must also be used in 
producing the comforts and luxuries which all 
desire. Capital, associated with labor, spins and 
weaves cotton ; makes carpets, glass, bricks ; erects 
houses ; brings water into a city ; prints newspapers 
and books ; paints pictures ; builds railroads. These, 
which were once the luxuries of a few, gradually 
became the comforts, and at last the necessaries, of 
all. The laboring man in Boston, when he rises, 
dresses himself in cloth made in the factories of 
England or Massachusetts, from wool raised in Aus- 
tralia, and cotton grown in Alabama. As he sits 
down to breakfast, he finds that cattle have been 
brought from Texas, and flour from Minnesota, that 
he might have his steak and his bread ; and ships 
have crossed the ocean to bring him his pepper and 
his salt. The table on which he eats is made of 
wood cut in the West Indies. The tumbler from 
which he drinks is the result of the science and skill 
which has at last made glass both beautiful and 
cheap. His house is more comfortable than was 
the palace of King Alfred or William the Conqueror. 
He rides to his work in a railway car which is vastly 
superior to the carriages in which duchesses rode 
fifty years ago. He stops, on his return, at the 



268 SELF-CUL TURE. 

Public Library, and has a selection of reading which 
would have been impossible to the greatest students 
fifty years ago ; or he reads a newspaper in which 
has been brought to him whatever has happened 
since yesterday in any part of the civilized world. 
All this is the result of the love of accumula- 
tion planted by the Creator in the human soul, 
and the large accumulations of capital in all Chris- 
tian lands. 

Therefore, when labor quarrels with capital, or 
capital neglects the interests of labor, it is like the 
hand thinking it does not need the eye, the ear, or 
the brain. Modern society is mutually dependent, 
part on part ; each on all, and all on each ; many 
members and one body. If the people in America 
and Europe have escaped the pestilence and famine 
which used to desolate vast regions, and which now 
lay waste other countries, it is because capital is 
planted side by side, in peaceful union, with labor. 

Moreover, in this condition, to which capital is 
essential, the accumulation of property is an edu- 
cation to the community. The love of money is 
often the root of evil, but it is also a motive to 
prudence, economy, industry, and skill. It de- 
velops the powers of observation, thought, care, 
patience, perseverance, exactitude. The work done 
each day in Boston, under the mighty stimulus of 
this motive, gives an education to the people far 
greater than all the schools and colleges can supply 
in the same time. 



ED UCA TION B Y MEANS OF MONE Y. 269 

It will not do, then, to condemn sweepingly the 
love of money or the desire to be rich ; for these are 
among the most powerful motives to activity, en- 
ergy, and improvement. To make money is a 
legitimate object. The question is, How is it to be 
made ? What methods are proper ? What means 
are wise ? 

In making money, that which is derived from pro- 
ductive industry educates the worker and helps 
him ; that which is derived from unproductive in- 
dustry degrades and injures him. 

Productive industry is that which adds to the 
real wealth of the community ; unproductive indus- 
try is that which adds no value to anything. 

The wealth of a community consists, not merely 
in outward possessions, but in all which gives value 
to life. Good pictures, fine poems, good lyceum lec- 
tures, scientific discoveries, health, safety, good man- 
ners, good morals, good behavior, make life more 
valuable. Consequently, we may place among pro- 
ductive laborers the poet, the painter, the judges 
and lawyers, the physician, the orators, the profes- 
sors, the clergyman. These are all working-men, 
adding as much to the wealth of society as the 
farmer, the manufacturer, or the merchant. 

But if a man spends his labor in doing wdiat adds 
no value to life, or diminishes its value, he is unpro- 
ductive. The gambler, who merely tries to get 
another man's money; the man who adulterates 
food, or makes poor articles which seem like good 



270 SELF-CULTURE. 

ones; the quack doctor who persuades people to 
take medicines which do them no good ; those who 
manufacture and sell poisonous liquors to destroy 
the peace of families and the health of the com- 
munity ; those who write books which corrupt the 
mind and heart, — are plainly unproductive laborers. 
But I also call the man an unproductive laborer 
who, as a lawyer or politician, tries to make the 
worse appear the better reason ; who seeks to gain 
wealth, reputation, fame, by any means, right or 
wrong. I call the man in trade an unproductive 
laborer who seeks to grow rich suddenly by specu- 
lation ; instead of by faithful, legitimate business. I 
call the preacher an unproductive laborer who, in- 
stead of helping men to lead good lives, teaches 
them only outside forms, sectarian self-satisfaction, 
narrow dogmas, or sensational emotions. Such 
men, if they sincerely believe they are doing right, 
may be saved themselves, so as by fire; but the 
wood, hay, and stubble which they have industri- 
ously put together will be burned. 

Doing such work may make a man cunning 
and adroit, but will not make him wise. Trying 
to dodge the laws of the universe will certainly re- 
sult in failure. Those who work in accordance with 
truth and justice grow nobler and stronger every 
day ; those who seek to thrive merely by falsehood 
and cunning, taper down at last to nothing. 

Smartness may endure for a night ; but truth 
cometh in the morning. 



EDUCATION BY MEANS OF MONEY. 271 

There is an education, also, in using money, as 
well as in making it. To select, among the different 
articles which one wishes, that which on the whole 
is the best ; to choose what to have and what to re- 
nounce, — teach prudence, economy, and broad views 
of life. Therefore it is well to give children and 
young people an allowance, that they may learn by 
experience how to make the best use of their 
money. Every man and woman needs a certain 
uncontrolled use of money, else they can never 
learn how to use it. I have known men who would 
give their wives and children whatever was wanted 
to buy any particular thing, but never trusted them 
to exercise their own discretion by having a regular 
sum to dispense. It was a mistake, a great mistake. 
For I have noticed that when these children grew 
up, and came at last into possession of their prop- 
erty, they became easy victims to adroit and un- 
scrupulous knaves. Besides, it is so painful for a 
woman or a young person to have to ask always for 
the money they want, that it leads to subterfuges. 
Every one should have for educational purposes the 
uncontrolled use of a certain amount of money, un- 
less they have shown themselves to be unfit for this 
privilege. The only way in which we can learn the 
use of money is by having it to use. 

But the use of money may teach us higher things 
than prudence, economy, and judgment. We may 
also be educated in this way to generosity and be- 
nevolence. 



272 SELF-CULTURE. 

Benevolence and generosity are not impulses, but 
habits ; that is, by practice, the impulse may be- 
come a habit. Impulsive benevolence may do more 
harm than good. To give is an art requiring study 
and practice. God loves cheerful givers, but he also 
loves judicious givers, — givers who are willing to 
give time and thought as well as money. Giving 
money may be like pouring water on the sand, or 
like planting a seed in good ground. You may help 
a man so as to teach him to lean on you, so as to 
take away his self-reliance and self-respect ; or you 
may help him so as to enable him to help himself, 
and to go forward in a career of activity and useful- 
ness. 

The fundamental principle which lies behind all 
these questions is laid down in the parable of the 
Talents and of the Pounds. Every man is a steward, 
bound to use all his powers and faculties, including 
his wealth, according to the will of God. "We are 
to give an account to God for all we have, all we do, 
all we are. We shall hear the words, " Give an ac- 
count of thy stewardship, for thou shalt no longer 
be steward." Not, perhaps, to any visible judge, or 
before any outward tribunal ; but, sooner or later, 
we shall see where we have wasted our time, squan- 
dered our faculties, or made pitiful returns for the 
vast bounty of the Almighty. 

The principle taught in the parable of the Pounds 
and of the Talents applies to every possession, 
faculty, influence, opportunity, knowledge, that we 



EDUCATION BY MEANS OF MONEY. 273 

have. "We are answerable to God for them all; 
we are to be judged for the use we make of them ; we 
are to be held to a strict accountability for each, and 
are to receive an exact retribution for the use or the 
neglect of them all. Now, money is one of these 
talents for the use of which we are to account. If 
for every idle word which men shall speak they 
must give an account in the day of judgment, so 
for every idle dollar they may spend they must 
also give an account. If one who is made trustee 
of the property of the widow and orphan must take 
good care of it, so that the best use shall be made 
of it, he must take the same care of what he calls 
his own. 

It is needless to say that this idea of stewardship, 
in regard to our property, is as yet very little re- 
ceived, and that if it were received, it would change 
the whole aspect of society. It would check the 
inordinate desire for accumulation ; for if we under- 
stood that we were not accumulating for ourselves, 
but only taking a new responsibility, a new care, a 
new duty, we should hesitate. It is not difficult to 
see how a small income shall be spent, but not so 
easy to satisfy one's conscience in spending a large 
one. Cecil says that he once heard that a worthy 
young man of his acquaintance had refused an op- 
portunity of engaging in a business which would 
very much increase his income. He remonstrated 
with him about it ; but the young man replied, " I 
have often heard you say that with the increase of 
18 



2 74 SELF-CUL TURE. 

property our responsibility increases, and I do not 
like to take on myself this additional trust." Most 
men feel the responsibility for their wealth when it 
comes. Before they have it, they imagine that if 
they are rich they can do as they please with their 
means ; but when it arrives, they find themselves 
held by numerous obligations which they never 
foresaw. They cannot do as they will, even with 
their own. 

Let us admit once for all that we are stewards 
and not owners of property ; that it does not belong 
to us, but to God ; that we have no right to spend a 
dollar without consideration, — and a large part of 
writing and preaching against the love of money 
might be dispensed with. We do not wish to have 
the care of money which is not ours. We do not 
envy the treasurer or cashier, though millions pass 
through his hands, as we envy the millionaire. In- 
ordinate love of money would be put an end to by 
this principle. Good men would still desire wealth, 
but it would be for the sake of usefulness, and the 
desire would be moderate and reasonable. 

As with the accumulation, so with the distribution 
of wealth. Accept the doctrine of stewardship, and 
half the difficulty is removed. What would God 
have me do ? is a question which would throw great 
light on many points. Here, for example, is a 
Christian church, containing one hundred families, 
the incomes of which, supposing it to be a wealthy 
church, may average five thousand dollars a year, 01 



EDUCATION BY MEANS OF MONEY. 275 

more. To be within the limit, we will call it five 
thousand dollars. Let all these families accept the 
doctrine of stewardship. Here is half a million 
dollars a year, for the use of which they are to 
account to God. Suppose they meet together to 
consider their duties in relation to it. Mr. A. rises 
and says, " I think that, as God's stewards, we ought 
to spend our incomes generously, on ourselves and 
our families. We ought to live well, and in as good 
style as our neighbors. We should make a good 
appearance. We should have as good furniture, 
clothing, equipages, as those with whom we asso- 
ciate, and give as good entertainments as they do. 
If we happen to have anything left, we ought to 
devote it to religious and benevolent objects. My 
maxim is, that he who does not provide for his own 
family has denied the faith, and is worse than an 
infidel." 

If Mr. A. succeeds in convincing the rest that 
this is their duty as stewards, the result would be 
this : On an average, they might give, out of an 
income of five thousand dollars, fifty dollars or a 
hundred dollars a year in charity. That is, out of 
an aggregate income of half a million, four hundred 
and ninety thousand might be spent on their own 
comforts and luxuries, and some ten thousand dollars 
a year for benevolent and religious objects. And I 
suppose that this is just about the proportion in 
many of our churches. 

This is probably the actual distribution, but I do 



276 SELF-CULTURE. 

not think that it would be easy to satisfy ourselves, 
on deliberate examination, that it was the right pro- 
portion. 

Probably other speakers might think differently. 
Mr. B., for example, might think it a Christian duty 
to save a part of one's income. He would speak 
thus : " I think Mr. A.'s view wrong. It tends to 
extravagance. If we spend all our income, we shall 
be likely to spend more. If we try to dress as well 
as our neighbors, to have as good furniture and 
houses, to give as good entertainments, some of us 
will be pretty sure to run in debt. Besides, are we 
any happier for living so ? Does the fine furniture 
give us pleasure enough to make up for the uneasy 
feeling that we are living beyond our means, or in 
danger of doing so. The only safe way is to lay up 
one-half or one-quarter of our income every year. 
Times may change. It is best to be on the safe side. 
Economy is a good old-fashioned New England 
virtue, which ought to be maintained." 

As against Mr. A., there is good sense in this 
view. And I have no doubt that very many act 
upon it, and will continue to do so. 

But what would be the result if it was adopted 
as a principle of action by our religious society ? 
The result would be, as regards charity, the same as 
before, or nearly the same. 

But let us listen to a third speaker, Mr. C. : "It 
is no doubt right that we should provide suitably 
for our families. Let them have what is comfortable 



EDUCATION BY MEANS OF MONEY. 277 

and what is tasteful. But these are not the expen- 
sive things. Expense comes from the love of display 
and from unnecessary luxuries. Can we not live 
comfortably on half our income, or three-fourths ? 
What shall we do with the rest ? Shall we lay it 
up, as our friend B. suggests ? But to what end ? 
To make ourselves safe against the future ? But is 
there no God in the future to take care of us as he 
has taken care of us in the past ? As stewards, we 
can trust our Master to see to our wants and those 
of our families, if we make a right use of what we 
hold in trust for him and his children. Let us, 
then, determine to use for others a certain definite 
portion of our incomes every year, — half of our 
income, if it is large ; or a quarter, or a tenth. But 
let us not leave it to accident. Let each man 
decide how much to apply every year to benevolent 
purposes. As we grow richer, let the proportion 
increase. If the man who has only one thousand 
dollars a year gives fifty to charity, or one-twentieth, 
then let the man who has ten thousand give a fifth, 
and the man who has twenty thousand give a half, 
or a third, or a fourth. Then we shall have the 
pleasure of taking the initiative in giving ; in not 
waiting till we are asked, but looking around for 
objects of benevolence. Then, if we have done any 
good in the world, made any one's path easier, 
lightened any heavy burden, sheltered the defence- 
less, or comforted the forlorn, we shall see and 
understand this by the inward satisfaction which 



278 SELF-CULTURE. 

all right-doing brings with it. Wise, conscien- 
tious, generous use of our means is repaid here 
and hereafter. ' Give, and it shall he given you ; 
full measure, pressed down and running over it shall 
be returned again.' " 

Is not this last the true principle for the use of 
our means ? 

The principle is the important thing ; where this 
is, the right method will follow. Only we must 
remember that giving is both an act and a habit ; 
an accomplishment which is to be learned, and a 
custom to be practised. The mistake made by 
many persons is to suppose that they can devote all 
their thought and energy for years to accumulation, 
and afterward learn how to use aright what has 
been thus gathered. It takes as much time and 
thought to learn how to spend money as to learn 
how to make money. So that, sometimes, a man 
who has shown great talent and energy in collecting 
a fortune, stands helpless before it, not knowing 
what to do with it after it is acquired; whereas, 
if he had begun in youth to practise the right way 
of using property as well as acquiring it, he would 
have the double satisfaction of receiving and giving. 
For certainly there is no way in which wealth can 
bring so much satisfaction to its possessor as when 
it is wisely and generously applied to all good 
objects. When Mr. Peabody, of London, had the 
happy thought of devoting a part of his large wealth 
during his lifetime to public objects, he showed no 



EDUCATION BY MEANS OF MONEY. 279 

great generosity, for it did not cost him a single 
sacrifice. The poor woman in the Gospel who gave 
the two mites, which was her whole income, gave 
more than his two millions. But he showed great 
good sense ; for this expenditure brought him a 
return of universal respect and good-will. Wherever 
he went, he was the conspicuous object of admira- 
tion and honor. He gave, and it was given him ; 
full measure, pressed down and running over. 

In Europe, it is often regarded as a religious 
duty to give to the beggars in the streets. Conse- 
quently, beggars increase and abound. We are 
learning better methods here. We now try to pre- 
vent pauperism, and to anticipate want. Instead 
of giving money in the street, we establish societies 
which visit those who are in want at their own 
houses ; which provide work for those out of work ; 
which provide hospitals for the sick, homes for the 
aged ; industrial schools for young men and women ; 
model lodging-houses, where comfort and health 
can be secured at reasonable rates; homes where 
inebriates can be saved ; reform schools, farm schools, 
help for discharged prisoners, bright and cheerful 
holly-tree inns instead of drinking saloons ; free 
music, free libraries, free baths in summer. This is 
all a movement in the right direction, for it is the 
practical form of the doctrine of the atonement, the 
reconciliation of love and truth ; it is thought put 
into our love ; it is mercy and truth met together ; 
it is the happy conjunction of good nature and good 
sense. 



280 SELF-CULTURE. 

But, after all, we are only at the beginning of 
this application of Christianity to life. Our society 
is still in a very disorganized state. The vast destruc- 
tion of property and disorganization of labor caused 
by the war, followed by the rage for speculation which 
always accompanies war, resulted in a great de- 
pression of business and want of confidence which 
held back capital from engaging in new enter- 
prises. 1 And so we have, not wide-spread famine, 
as in China ; not starvation in the street, not exten- 
sive pestilence, not organized bands of robbers, — for 
we have risen above the social level where such 
evils are sure to appear. But some serious symp- 
toms show themselves which demand a union of all 
good and wise men to meet the dangers of the hour. 
The " sturdy beggars " who infested England two or 
three centuries ago reappear in our midst under the 
name of " tramps." We do not hang them, fifty at 
a time, as was done in the reign of Elizabeth. Dema- 
gogues declaim against property, and teach people 
that those who lend them money are enemies and 
tyrants ; to be resisted, even to the repudiation of 
their debts. Wild theories of currency inflation, of 
communism, of a war of labor against capital, show 
a blind fermentation in the public mind which 
demands the wisest, kindest, and firmest treatment. 

These are the evils of a transition state; of a 
period when we have left the Garden of Eden 

1 This lecture was delivered in 1878, during the great business 
depression, which had not then ceased. 



EDUCATION BY MEANS OF MONEY. 281 

behind us, and have not yet reached the Kingdom 
of Heaven. Such evils are the divinely appointed 
whips and spurs to make us go forward to something 
better, and not rest indolently contented, in the 
negative comforts and half-virtues of quiet times. 
Let us believe in providence as regards the future, 
and do our work now, as those who are to give an 
account for every opportunity, talent, and privilege. 
In this country we are all members of each other ; 
no man can live to himself or die to himself. If 
one suffers, all suffer. We r„re all, therefore, obliged 
to take an interest in the condition of those around 
us. For our own sakes, and for the sake of our 
children, if not for the sake of God and humanity, 
we must do our part in these hours of social struggle, 
lend our arm to sustain the weak and raise the 
fallen, and our sufficient reward will be to find that 
always and everywhere " it is more blessed to give 
than to receive." 



XIII. 

THE EDUCATION OF THE TEMPER 



XIII. 
THE EDUCATION OF THE TEMPER. 



I THOUGHT, one day, that I should like to write 
a sermon on Temper. But, on looking into 
the Concordance, I discovered that the word was 
not to be found in the Bible, — not in the form of 
the noun. " Temper," the noun, is not there ; but 
the verb "to temper" is. Then I turned to the 
oldest English Dictionary I have, Bailey's, a little 
over one hundred years old, and I found the noun 
defined thus : Temper (from iemperies, Latin), " Hu- 
mor, natural disposition, constitution ; " also, " mod- 
eration." " Temperament " is defined as " a proper 
and proportional mixture of the elements, but more 
especially the humors of the human body ; the nafr= 
ural habitude and constitution of the animal hu- 
mors." Pushing my researches further, I looked 
into a Latin Dictionary printed in 1509, a curious 
old Polyglot in eight languages (which once be- 
longed to Mather Byles, and has his name on the 
fly-leaf), and there I found the Latin word defined 
to mean " the temper of the air, the healthful mix- 



286 SELF-CULTURE. 

ture of heat and cold, of dry and moist, in the 
atmosphere." 

Once, years ago, travelling on a Mississippi 
steamer, I took up a tract, issued by the American 
Tract Society, which was lying on the table, and 
read the title. It surprised and attracted me, for it 
was this : " Temper is Everything." The contents 
corresponded to the title. It declared the essence 
of Christianity to be, not belief, nor emotion, nor 
ceremonies, nor an outward routine of decent con- 
duct, but good temper. The writer of the tract, 
while writing it, seemed to have forgotten all about 
his Orthodoxy, and the publishers to have forgotten 
all about their sectarianism. It was a simple Chris- 
tian tract, such as Fenelon or Channing might have 
written, and the Apostle Paul approved. 

Temper is everything. But what is good temper, 
and how is it to be obtained and cherished ? 

Good nature, good temper, and good humor are 
three qualities often confounded, but which it is de- 
sirable to distinguish. Good nature is, as the word 
implies, something born in us ; no irritability in 
the blood, but, instead, a sort of natural sunshine, a 
born contentedness, a sympathetic feeling toward 
all about us. Good humor comes from pleasant 
surroundings, a happy environment, agreeable cir- 
cumstances. A good-humored man is only good- 
humored while everything goes right; when things 
go wrong, his good humor departs, and bad humor 
arrives. But good temper results from culture and 



THE EDUCATION OF THE TEMPER. 287 

development of the higher faculties. It comes from 
self-control, observation, experience, good sense, 
knowledge of one's self and of others. It is, in fact, 
the harmony of soul belonging to a well-balanced 
character. It is the outward sign of peace within. 
While a man is at war with himself and with God ; 
while he is rebelling against his circumstances and 
against divine providence ; while his lower nature 
rules the higher, or is at war with it, so as to pro- 
duce a condition of unstable equilibrium, — he cannot 
be good-tempered. War with himself, inward unrest, 
will show itself in outward discontent. But when 
one is inwardly at peace ; when he has conquered 
the evil within him, and subdued his passions and 
appetites till they obey the voice of reason ; when 
he has formed a habit of doing right always and 
everywhere ; when selfishness has given way to 
generosity, and perfect love has cast out fear, — then 
all this shows itself in that equipoise of soul which 
we call good temper or equanimity. 

While, therefore, good nature depends on the 
physical organization, and cannot be cultivated by 
effort ; while good humor depends on circumstances, 
and is no part of the man himself, — good temper is 
something which we can all acquire, if we choose. 
We cannot make ourselves good-natured or good- 
humored; but we can make ourselves good-tem- 
pered. Good temper, therefore, belongs properly to 
the doctrine of self-culture. 

This word "temper" seems at first to have in- 



288 SELF-CUL TURE. 

tended the healthful blending of opposite characters 
in the atmosphere ; then, the harmonious balance 
of opposite qualities in the human body ; lastly, the 
balance of various qualities and tendencies in the 
human mind and heart. 

The temper, therefore, of the soul is something 
more than a mood. Good temper, as we have seen, 
is different from good nature. Good nature results 
from a healthy organization, a sunny constitution, a 
cheerful, kindly, sympathizing disposition, which 
causes one to look at the good side of the world, the 
bright side of characters ; to see good, and not evil, 
everywhere ; and so to feel and speak and act in a 
kindly way on most occasions. It is a great gift 
and one to be thankful for. 

God sends, here and there, these good natures 
into the world to make sunshine for us. They are 
uncritical, they do not find fault, they disturb no 
one's conscience, and it is rest and quiet to be with 
them. But they are made so ; those who are dif- 
ferent cannot make themselves good-natured. Those 
of us who are moody sometimes, and irritable some- 
times, and indignant often, and sharp and severe in 
our censures of evil ; who discriminate, liking some 
people and disliking other people ; we, whom no- 
body ever calls good-natured, cannot make ourselves 
so ; nor, indeed, is it desirable that we should. We 
are not sunshine ; but, perhaps, shade is necessary 
as well as sunshine in this world. Some people are 
intended for other purposes ; are made to be minis- 



THE EDUCATION OF THE TEMPER. 289 

ters of truth, to be soldiers of the right, actively use- 
ful, or prophets crying in the wilderness. Every 
man has his proper gift from the Lord, some after 
this fashion and others after that; and while the 
proper gift of some persons is to be good-natured, 
others are not made for that, but for something 
different. 

But though we cannot all have good nature, we 
can all have good temper ; and that is something 
higher. It is the blended and balanced action of all 
the faculties and powers. The atmosphere is well- 
tempered when it is neither too hot nor too cold, 
neither too dry nor too moist ; having neither too 
much electricity nor too little ; when the warm cur- 
rents temper the cold, and the dry currents absorb 
the moisture. In such days we see the feathery 
white clouds lying against the deep blue sky, but 
not darkening the sun nor chilling the air. Re- 
freshing breezes play around the face, but do not 
chill the heated body ; they only cool it. In such 
days it is a luxury to live. We can do anything 
well. All our faculties are active. The reason is 
that the atmosphere is good-tempered. 

The body is in a good state when it is well-tem- 
pered ; when the nervous system and the blood and 
the nutritive system all work in their due harmony 
and proportion ; when these three great constituents 
of the body are all well balanced against each other. 
The body is not well-tempered in a student who 
takes no exercise, and where everything goes to feed 
19 



290 SELF-CULTURE. 

the brain ; nor in a pugilist in training, where every- 
thing goes to feed the muscles ; nor in an epicure, 
who devotes his whole attention to eating. But, 
when physical and muscular exercise alternate with 
study, when all the organs and physical powers are 
in happy balance and proportion, then we can say 
that the body is well-tempered, or in good temper. 
But body and soul are distempered when out of 
tune, unmodulated, unbalanced. 

But good temper, in the highest sense of the word, 
belongs to the soul. It is a sign of the harmonious 
and well-balanced working of the different moral 
powers. If I am bad-tempered, it proves something 
to be morbid and unbalanced in my soul. If one's 
character is irritable and peevish, and not merely 
moody, this is a symptom of irregular action of the 
moral nature. 

This is the point I wish to urge. Good temper 
and bad temper are symptoms of good and bad 
moral health. Good temper is not a thing to be 
aimed at directly : it is a result. Bad temper, in 
like manner, is a result. It is symptomatic of 
some irregular, abnormal action of the soul. You 
cannot cure it directly by an effort to be good-tem- 
pered. You can, no doubt, by an effort, repress its 
manifestations. You can control yourself, so as not 
to say or do bad-tempered things. But the bad 
temper itself is to be cured, as a musician cures a 
discord in his instrument, by tuning all the strings. 
The musical discord is a symptom that some strings 



THE EDUCATION OF THE TEMPER. 291 

are out of order. Bad temper is a symptom of some 
moral strings being " jangled, out of tune, and harsh." 
First of all, then, you must tune your instrument. 

For there is no such delicate and wonderful 
musical instrument as the soul of man. The great 
organs of the world are only types of it. The soul 
sits within, touching all its own secret and wonderful 
keys, drawing out all its own strange, mysterious 
music. The soul of man has a thousand powers 
balancing each other, and when tempered to each 
other they make the sweetest harmony. But when 
one is not modulated by the rest, it soon grows 
sharp and harsh, and then what we call bad temper, 
or distemper, is apt to come as a sign of this unpro- 
portioned activity. 

Thus, for example, we see the perceptive powers, 
which are devoted to facts, balanced by the reflective, 
which are devoted to laws. The man who lives 
only in outward facts ; who knows only forms, 
numbers, dates, outward things, — grows hard-tem- 
pered. Outward facts, by themselves, gradually 
harden the nature. The man who devotes himself 
to reflection alone, the student of metaphysics, 
morals, and science, who spends his time in abstract 
reasoning, grows cold-tempered. His sympathies 
are chilled ; he is taken away from the neighborhood 
of men into the thin upper air of meditation, which 
is lonely and cold. Imagination, taste, and the 
sense of beauty, when cultivated alone, do, as we 
know well, produce irritability of temper. Artists, 



292 SELF-CULTURE. 

poets, and musicians are apt to be irritable. Men 
of business, absorbed in their object, which calls 
out daring, energy, resolution, and force acquire 
often a wilfulness of temper. They are apt to 
become despotic and domineering. It is not safe to 
allow any tendency to go to excess. God has 
balanced every faculty by some other, and means 
they shall all be used. He also gives opportunity 
and inducement to use them all. He has given us 
an outward world to exercise our senses, — gorgeous, 
and varied with a boundless variety. Does he not 
desire, then, that we should become acquainted with 
minerals and vegetables, with trees and animals, with 
flowers and rocks, with sky and sea ? He has given 
us an inward world of abstract ideas, teaching us to 
compare and deduce, to ascend to universal laws, 
analyze complex phenomena, and so enter into the 
mysterious workshops of his creation. He has 
given us fear and hope, timidity and courage, ima- 
gination and reason, sympathy and self-reliance, 
love of home and love of change, desire for new 
things, satisfaction in old things, reverence for the 
past, interest in the future ; conscience, which chains 
us to a law of absolute right; affection, which 
attaches itself to individual persons ; hope, that 
reaches forward ; memory, that reaches backward ; 
the combative element, which loves to fight against 
opposing forces ; the desire for peace, which seeks 
universal harmony and brotherhood. He has given 
us all ; and good temper in the soul is the sign of 



THE EDUCATION OF THE TEMPER. 293 

their harmonious activity ; bad temper, of their one- 
sided and immoderate activities. 

But what shall temper them ? What moderate 
them ? What produce this divine harmony ? Who 
shall teach us how to sit and play on this wonder- 
ful instrument, so as to draw out its ineffable 
music ? 

First, we may say that God, in the arrangements 
of our life, helps us to temper our souls. 

The old naturalists supposed four temperaments 
in the body, derived from its four fluids, according 
to the four qualities, hot, cold, moist, and dry. When 
there was an excess of blood, there was the sanguine 
temperament ; of phlegm, the phlegmatic ; of yellow 
bile, the choleric ; of black bile, the melancholy. 
Our word "melancholy" means literally " black bile," 
for so do the wrecks of old theories float down the 
current of time in the form of words. This theory 
of temperaments has long ago been wrecked on 
some rock-bound shore of hard experience. But it 
remains essentially true that, in body and soul, we 
are differently tempered, and envisage life according 
to our temper of body or mind. Our wisdom is 
to temper our own special tendencies, and moderate 
them. 

Observe the pains taken with the temperature of 
the globe. See how earth has its shores cooled and 
bathed by the sea and air; its surface so graded 
that the rains shall neither rest on it too long nor run 
off from it too speedily; the strata are so tipped that 



294 SELF-CULTURE. 

the water gushes out, here and there, in cool springs ; 
the mountains and hills are so arranged that the 
rivers meander to and fro over the surface of each 
continent, fertilizing and connecting all parts ; moun- 
tains rise in the heated tropics, carrying the land 
up into cooler regions, catching the sea-hreeze, and 
compelling it to deposit its burden of water in daily 
and nightly showers. Great masses of ice at the 
poles set in motion currents in the ocean and atmos- 
phere, which roll toward the equator, and bring 
perpetual reinforcements of cool water and cool air. 
Clouds sail to and fro, — the great ships of heaven, 
— going about their Master's business, carrying 
water from one part of the continent to the other ; 
carrying, also, a freight of electric fire from where it 
is in excess to where it is needed. So they do the 
work of a mercantile navy; and sometimes, too, 
they meet in battle, like ships of war, and we have 
a terrific naval engagement, with awful discharges 
of lightning with rolling thunder, yet not to destroy 
life, but to save it. Such pains is taken to keep 
the earth in good temper, with equal balance of hot 
and cold, moist and dry. So, too, when the aurora 
.borealis appears in the heavens, it is not merely to 
delight us with its beauty. Use always lies under 
the beauty, as the skeleton beneath the outward 
human form. Those steady discharges of auroral 
light to the zenith along innumerable conducting 
lines come, it is thought, to equalize the electric 
conditions of the air. As the engine blows off its 



THE EDUCATION OF THE TEMPER. 295 

excess of steam, so the earth is blowing off its ex- 
cess of electricity, and tempering its climate for 
human use. 

If God takes such pains to temper the climate of 
the earth on which our bodies live, does he not also 
temper the climate for the soul ? Let us trust in 
his providence ; let us believe that the events of 
life, its trials and disasters, its varied experiences, 
come, not blindly nor by accident, but are sent to 
give the right temper to our moral and spiritual na- 
ture, to fit us for the work we have to do in time 
and eternity. 

The word " temper " is applied to the manufacture 
of steel. To temper steel exactly is the difficult point, 
and even the cutlers themselves do not know how 
they do it ; they see something in the look of the 
steel which shows them that it is of the right tem- 
per. The utmost care, the most delicate and con- 
stant attention, is necessary in that ancient and 
wonderful process by which iron imbibes carbon 
and turns to steel. The smallest crack in the side 
of the furnace vitiates the result. Day after day 
the terrible fire rages in the heart of the shut 
trough, and there the work goes on. So the steel 
gets its proper temper, whether it is to be a razor, 
a coach-spring, or a file. 

And will not God take as much care to temper 
us as the steel manufacturer in Damascus or Shef- 
field takes of his knives and sabres ? We, also, are 
often put into a raging furnace, and there, amid the 



2^6 SELF-CULTURE. 

stern experiences of life, we lie in the fiie to be tem- 
pered, and go under the hammer to become compact 
for the work we are to do in the universe. One is 
to be made into a delicate instrument, like a razor ; 
another into a hard one, like a file ; and each needs 
to be brought to a different temper. So, too, was 
our nation tempered in the fire and furnace of war, 
and since then in the financial disasters of peace. 
We have gone under the heavy hammer blows of 
disaster and ruin. We needed to be tempered. 
We had been going into excesses of self-love, into 
aberrations of egotism, which were destroying our 
national life. We had been intemperate in our 
self-love. We had forgotten to worship God with 
reverence, to love man with tenderness. We needed 
to be tempered again, and our great war and the 
subsequent evils may help us into a better temper. 

As we distinguished good temper from good na- 
ture, so we must distinguish ill nature and ill humor 
from bad temper. A person may be, by nature, 
irritable, and unable always to repress the outbreak 
of this irritability ; but may wish to do so, try to do 
so, often succeed in doing so, and grieve when un- 
able to do so. And a person out of humor because 
things have gone wrong may become good-humored 
again when things go right. But a bad-tempered 
man is apt to put the blame on others, not on him- 
self. He thinks himself the victim, others the ag- 
gressors. He therefore never tries to correct himself, 
does not wish to, does not think he ought to do it. 



THE EDUCATION OF THE TEMPER. 297 

He must be converted, wholly changed, born again, 
before he can be cured. 

Fortunately, however, most of us are only bad- 
tempered to a certain extent, and may be gradually 
educated into something better. 

The two roots of bad temper, out of which it 
grows, are want of conscience and want of love. 
When a man is not living, and does not mean to 
live, according to his own convictions of right, he is 
at war with himself. He has no inward peace. All 
is discord within. There is no proper balance among 
his powers, nor can there be till the law of right is 
supreme. 

A bad-tempered person is always suspecting griev- 
ances, — imagining himself ill-used, discontented with 
his position, dissatisfied with his circumstances. He 
is in a condition of perpetual discontent and warfare. 
All contact irritates him, and he makes himself and 
others miserable. It is so disagreeable to be with 
him, that men avoid him, and leave him alone with 
his dissatisfactions. It is so unpleasant to oppose 
him, that, rather than contradict him, they remain 
silent ; and so he loses the benefit which comes to 
us from a healthy resistance. When he speaks, 
people give way, or run away. He never blames 
himself, always some one else, for anything wrong ; 
so he loses the peace born of confession and repent- 
ance. However disagreeable he is to others, he is 
much more so to himself, for a thoroughly bad- 
tempered man is a thoroughly miserable man. He 



298 SELF-CULTURE. 

carries the fires of hell in his own soul, and surely 
we should rather be sorry for him than be angry 
with him. Who can help pitying such a man as 
Dean Swift, pursued and tormented forever by the 
furies of blind rage, hate, and discontent, the great- 
est genius and the most miserable man of his day ? 
Who can help pitying Byron, whose magnificent 
genius only illustrated the selfish bitterness of his 
career ? Such a man, being at war with himself, is 
out of temper with every one else. And the other 
root of bad temper is selfishness. When a man 
makes himself the only end ; lives for selfish pleas- 
ure, selfish gain, selfish power, fame, — then every 
other man is his rival, and every success but his 
own irritates him. He becomes full of envy, hatred, 
malice, and all uncharitableness. If an artist, or 
writer, or preacher, or politician, he is jealous of the 
success of others. Instead of being inspired with a 
generous emulation by the sight of another's excel- 
lence, he is filled with mean envy. Like Malvolio 
in the play, he is sick of* self-love, and feels every 
resistance or misfortune as if it were a cannon- 
bullet, while a generous and guiltless disposition 
will regard it only as a bird-bolt. 

The cure for bad temper is, therefore, first, to 
learn to obey one's conscience, and acquire a habit 
of doing what is right ; and, secondly, to learn to 
forget one's self, and acquire a habit of living for 
others. Then there enters the soul that good tem- 
per which is higher than good nature, more lasting 



THE EDUCATION OF THE TEMPER. 299 

and more profound than good humor ; the good tem- 
per which grows deeper and purer and sweeter with 
advancing years, which no wrong can embitter, no 
misfortune chill, which sits in the sunlight, and en- 
joys clear day when darkness falls around. Such 
an one is "his own music, his own health." He 
has a summer day all the way to heaven. His well- 
tuned humors are in a perpetual harmony. He is 
the man described by Crashaw : — 

" Whose latest, and most leaden hours, 
Fall with soft wings, stuck with fresh flowers ; 
And, when life's sweet journey ends, 
Soul and body part like friends ; 
No quarrels, murmurs, no delay, — 
A kiss, a sigh, and so away ! " 

Conscience and love, when they govern the char- 
acter, and are accepted as its rulers, produce this 
heavenly peace in the soul. All the powers fall 
into their places, and become harmonious under 
their sway. And these, again, are elevated to their 
supreme place, when we come to know and to love 
God. 

Love, sitting in the heart, touches all the keys and 
brings out all the music. If we desire to do what 
will please God, and what will help man, we pres- 
ently find ourselves taken out of our narrow habits 
of thought and action ; we find new elements of our 
nature called into activity ; we are no longer run- 
ning along a narrow track of selfish habit ; we are 
necessarily brought, in the providence of God, into 



300 SELF-CULTURE. 

new relations, have new and difficult duties ; but 
the result appears in a healthy state of mind and 
heart, and that perfume and aroma which we call 
good temper. 

Therefore, the first condition of all true life is 
this supreme love to God and goodness. If, each 
day, we seek first of all to be in a spirit of good-will, 
to be open to sympathy with those around us, to do 
what work God sends us from love for him, to do 
whatever our hand finds to do for others out of love 
for our neighbor, — then we shall have that "perfume 
tempered together, pure and holy," which shall make 
the day sweet and the night serene, the peace pass- 
ing understanding which Christ's love gives, and the 
world cannot take away. 

Have we not sometimes seen persons on whom 
this ineffable Dove of Peace seemed always to 
brood, — some persons whom nothing could disturb, 
no accident, no disappointment, no disaster; who 
never seemed vexed, never discomposed, never sore, 
never out of temper ; who were impregnable to all 
assaults of evil ; who were like the rock in the sea, 
over which the great billows break and roar, but 
which stands unmoved, and emerges at last calm and 
firm as ever ? 

What produced this divine serenity, subject to no 
moods, clouded by no depression, this perpetual 
Sunday of the heart? It was not merely good- 
nature, not the accident of a happy organization. 
It was deeper than that. It was the perfect poise 



THE EDUCATION OF THE TEMPER. 301 

resulting from a Christian experience. It was the 
habit of looking to God in love and to man in love. 

Wordsworth, in one of his poems, describes Mat- 
thew, the village schoolmaster, as " a soul of God's 
best earthly mould ; " a soul which felt so profoundly 
that it seemed to think profoundly ; a soul in which 
old affections were so deeply rooted that they made 
him unequal to any verbal expression, but gave an 
aroma to every utterance, so that words from his 
lips turned to poetry. Tears of light, dews of glad- 
ness, came into the old man's eyes in thinking of 
former friends and early days ; mirth above, with 
sadness beneath ; eyes dim with childish tears at 
the thought of what age had taken away and left 
behind ; the wish to be more beloved ; but all these 
forgotten presently in the joy of the moment. Thus 
Wordsworth describes his schoolmaster, Matthew, 
finding in a commonplace person the elements of 
poetry, because of his well-tempered soul. 

This is what the Apostle Paul means by his de- 
scription of charity. That wonderful description is 
not rhapsody or declamation ; nor is it the account 
of an ideal, super-angelic state, impossible for us 
here, to be reached in some heavenly world. This 
divine power of love is possible for us all. Only let 
the love for God and man enter the soul, and then 
you have in you the elements here described. You 
will find it not difficult to "suffer long and be 
kind." It will seem a very simple thing not to 
envy, not to boast, not to behave unseemly, not to 



302 SELF-CUL TURE. 

be always seeking your own. Whereas, before, you 
were easily provoked, now you smile at provocation, 
and are unruffled by injury. You become able to 
" bear all things " without growing angry ; to " be- 
lieve all things," no matter how bad and false they 
may be, have in them a possibility of some future 
good ; to hope for all good, in the midst of evil, and 
to " endure all things " to the end, patient, because 
sure that the Lord reigns. This does not require 
that our love shall be perfect, unalloyed, or undis- 
turbed. It does not mean that we shall be angels, 
but that we shall begin, under this mighty stimu- 
lus, to grow up into all things good and right. 

Good temper does not come from repression, but 
expression; not from emptiness, but from fulness. 
It is not merely abstinence, though we must often 
abstain ; nor renunciation, though renunciation is a 
necessary exercise ; nor self-denial, though the prac- 
'tice of self-denial is essential to all manliness. But 
true temperance is higher than abstinence : it is 
harmonious development, well-balanced growth. 

And the necessary basis of it all is faith in a liv- 
ing God. We cannot grow from bad temper to 
good temper while we only believe in force or law, 
in the properties of matter, or in a God far off, above 
the sky, a King and Judge, but no Father. To have 
a sweet temper, we must have faith in a divine 
providence. That alone lifts us above anxiety and 
care; that alone plants our feet on a rock, and 
brings content, satisfaction, and peace into the soul. 



THE EDUCATION OF THE TEMPER. 303 

Good temper may be the last attainment of the 
soul. It is often the result of a long experience, 
and yet we have it at any moment when we are un- 
selfish, when we are thinking of others. This gives 
us self-possession, inward peace, power to do any 
work well, satisfaction with ourselves, and a radiance 
of light and love which enables us to help others. 



XIV. 
CULTURE BY READING AND BOOKS. 



XIV. 

CULTURE BY READING AND BOOKS. 



THE subject of this chapter is " Beading as a 
Means of Culture." 
The " Publisher's Circular " gives the statistics of 
the books issued each year from the press in Eng- 
land. The annual number of titles, one year with 
another, is about five thousand. About two-thirds 
of these are new books; the others are reprints. 
Last year there were 737 theological books, 529 
educational works, 522 juvenile books, and 854 
works of fiction. I have not at hand the statistics 
of books for the United States, but it must compare 
favorably with that of England, as a larger propor- 
tion of our population are able to read than in that 
country. The number of copies of newspapers 
printed and circulated every year in the United 
States is enormous, — I was about to say frightful. 
The annual circulation is fifteen hundred millions 
of copies, which would give about forty copies every 
"year to every man, woman, and child in the United 
States. 



308 SELF-CULTURE. 

These statistics show how much time is occupied 
by the people in reading. And it is a valuable 
education, so far as it goes. Poor as much is that 
is printed, it is better than the common talk. The 
average newspaper is higher than the average con- 
versation. The newspaper does not swear, does not 
use coarse and gross language ; it is often weak, but 
does not talk pure nonsense. It is trying to say 
something, and it has to seem to be aiming at some- 
thing honest, true, and generous. The newspapers 
give a vast amount of information in regard to the 
affairs of mankind. The nation which reads news- 
papers is able to sympathize with the people of 
other countries ; men's hearts are enlarged, and they 
are helped to love their fellow-men. Without news- 
papers, we should never have felt sympathy with 
Greece in her revolution, with Poland in its misfor- 
tunes, with Italy in its independence and unity, 
with France in her great disasters and subsequent 
recovery. Without the newspapers, we should not 
have sent food to starving Ireland in its years of 
famine, for we should, as a people, have known 
nothing about it. The newspapers create a common 
feeling and a common opinion through the whole 
land, and a sympathy with the people of other 
lands. So they help the cause of humanity and of 
social progress. 

But with all this good done by reading news- 
papers, there is one particular evil. It produces ' 
that state of mind which the Book of Acts ascribed 



CULTURE BY READING AND BOOKS. 309 

to the Athenians : " The Athenians and strangers at 
Athens passed all their time," so we are told in the 
Acts, " in seeing and hearing some new thing." But 
this desire to know something new did not enable 
them to receive Christianity, though Christianity was 
then the newest thing in the world, and something 
which would make the whole world new. What 
they wanted was not the new, but the novel. They 
wished for novel sensations, perpetual change. This 
love for intellectual excitement weakened the grasp 
of their mind so much that at last they lost the 
power of perceiving truth. They could not tell 
the difference between a new gospel and a new 
quackery. And so it happened that in Athens 
almost alone, of all places where Paul preached, — 
in Athens, the eye of Greece, the literary emporium 
of the earth, — in Athens there were no converts to 
Christianity, and no Christian church. We nowhere 
read or hear of the church at Athens, and we have 
in the New Testament no epistle to the Athenians. 

Because, therefore, the people of Athens were so 
fond of new tilings, they could not see nor know the 
new thing when it was before their eyes. What 
Paul said to them was a slight excitement, gave 
them a half-hour's entertainment, about as much as 
would have been occasioned by a new statue by 
Praxiteles, or a new oration by Lysias, or the arrival 
of ambassadors from .the great king, or a fleet of 
triremes sailing up the Gulf of Salamis, or the cele- 
bration of the mysteries at Eleusis. "There is a 



310 SELF-CUL TURE. 

Jew come to the city preaching a new doctrine; 
will you go and hear him, O Cleon ? He speaks to 
the people on the Areopagus." " Certainly, provided 
he gets through in season for the tragedy of ' (Edipus 
Tyrannus,' which is to be acted to-day in the Theatre 
of Bacchus." And so they hear Paul, and then 
listen to the rhythmic strain of Sophocles ; and by 
the time they have reached the catastrophe, the 
woes of (Edipus have made them quite forget the 
story of Christ's death and resurrection. 

So Paul departed from among them. There was 
no depth in that soil. 

The newspaper creates and feeds the appetite for 
news. When we read it, it is not to find what 'is 
true, what is important, what we must consider and 
reflect upon, what we must carry away and remem- 
ber, but what is new. When any very curious or 
important event occurs, the newspaper, in narrating 
it, often gives, as its only comment and reflection, 
this phrase, " What next ? " That is often the 
motto of the newspaper and the newspaper reader, 
"What next?" The only reflection and moral 
derived from learning a great fact is simply this, 
"Now let us hear of another." The whole world 
rushes to the newspaper every morning to find out 
what has happened since yesterday ; and the moment 
it finds what has happened, it cares no more about 
it. We think no more of yesterday's newspaper 
than of yesterday's dinner. We forget both as soon 
as possible. This is a mental dissipation which 



CULTURE BY READING AND BOOKS. 311 

takes away mental earnestness, and destroys all 
hearty interest in truth. It also weakens the 
memory. The memory, like all other powers, is 
strengthened by exercise. We cultivate our memory 
by remembering. But if we read, not intending to 
remember what we read, but expecting to forget it, 
then we cultivate the habit of forgetting. I think 
that the effect of reading newspapers, in the way 
we read them, must be to weaken steadily and 
permanently, the memory of the nation. Every 
generation will be born with a worse memory than 
that which preceded it. The proper way to cure 
this evil would be to select every day from the 
newspaper certain important facts to be carried in 
the mind, considered and thought about. These 
would be fixed in the memory. They should be 
made the subject of conversation with friends or in 
the family, and this would improve the memory, 
instead of destroying it. 

In short, in reading, and in all that we read, our mind 
should be active, and not passive. Milton says : — 

" Who reads 
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not 
A spirit and genius equal or superior, 
Uncertain and unsettled still remains, 
Deep versed in books and shallow in himself." 

And Lord Bacon tells us that "reading makes a 
full man, conference (or conversation) a ready man, 
and writing an exact man ; " and that we should read, 
not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and 



312 SELF-CULTURE. 

take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but 
to weigh and consider. Montaigne, who had a pas- 
sion for books, who never travelled without them, 
and called them the best viaticum for this journey 
of life, said that the principal use of reading, to him, 
was, that it roused his reason. It employed his 
judgment, not his memory. "Bead much, not many 
things," is good advice. There was an old saying, 
" He is a man of one book." If one reads but one 
book, he may read that one book so well as to be a 
very hard man to encounter. But he is a happy 
person who enjoys his books, and to whom the day 
does not seem long enough for reading. For books 
are friends who never quarrel, never complain, are 
never false ; who come from far ages and old lands 
to talk with us when we wish to hear them, and are 
silent when we are weary. Good books take us 
away from our small troubles and petty vexations 
into a serene atmosphere of thought, nobleness, truth. 
They are solace in sorrow, and companions in joy. 

Knowledge of books, and a habit of careful read- 
ing, is a most important means of intellectual de- 
velopment. It gives mental breadth, poise, and 
authority. The man of great practical abilities, but 
unacquainted with the history or theory of a sub- 
ject, is liable to make serious mistakes. He cannot 
be trusted. If he is conscious himself of his igno- 
rance, he is timid ; if not conscious, he is rash. It 
would be impossible for our members of Congress to 
commit so many blunders if they should pass an 



CULTURE BY READING AND BOOKS. 313 

examination in political economy before taking their 
seats. To read two or three good books on any sub- 
ject is equivalent to hearing it discussed by an 
assembly of wise, able, and impartial experts, who 
tell you all that can be known about it. You see 
the whole field, understand all that can be said on 
one side or the other, know what has been the re- 
sult in practice of either course. The experience of 
the whole world, and of all past history, comes to 
your aid. 

The moral influence also of good books is very 
great. They purify the taste, elevate the character, 
make low pleasures unattractive, and carry the soul 
up into a region of noble aims and generous pur- 
poses. All first-class books are eminently moral ; 
and all immoral books are, so far, poor books. 
Homer, Shakspeare, Plato, Dante, are pure in their 
spirit, and elevate the character. No one can 
make a thorough study of such books as these with- 
out being a better man. Milton says, and says 
truly, that " our sage and serious poet, Spenser, is, I 
dare be known to think, a better teacher of temper- 
ance than Scotus or Aquinas." Who can read the 
biography of Dr. Franklin without learning to ad' 
mire such a life of perpetual study, unfailing indus- 
try, large patriotism, temperance, good-humor, and 
general good- will ? When we read the story of 
Washington we become sure that disinterested pub- 
lic service is a real thing. The charming allegory 
of the " Pilgrim's Progress " teaches, in pictures too 



314 SELF-CULTURE. 

vivid to be ever forgotten, of the temptations and 
dangers we must encounter in any serious effort to 
save our soul. 

Eeligious books are usually considered dull and 
uninteresting ; but that they need not be so appears 
from the example of this book of Bunyan's, and from 
the popularity of religious books far inferior in their 
quality. In fact, religious books stand at the sum- 
mit of literature. First come the Bibles of the race, 
— the books of books, — and, before all others, the 
Christian and Hebrew Bible, which constitutes the 
chief reading of millions of the most civilized races 
of men. Then come the Bibles of the Hindoos, the 
Persians, the Chinese, the Buddhists, also circulated 
by millions of copies during numerous centuries. 
Next come religious books of the second class, as 
the works of Homer, Hesiod, Eschylus, Pindar; the 
great poems of Dante and Milton ; and, after these, 
the lives of saints, the liturgies and hymns of the 
ages, the manuals of devotion, "The Imitation of 
Christ," " Taylor's Holy Living," the works of 
Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Swedenborg, 
Channing. The vast circulation of such works tes- 
tifies that there is nothing so interesting to the 
human heart as religion. 

But " let him that readeth understand." It used 
to be thought a great credit to a boy to " love his 
book," to be fond of reading. But all depends on 
what we read and how we read. One may have a 
morbid love of reading. The habit of reading may 



CULTURE BY READING AND BOOKS. 315 

become an evil. I have known persons who had 
acquired such a love for novel-reading that it was a 
real disease. They swallowed novel after novel as a 
rum-drinker swallows his glass of spirits. They 
lived on that excitement. They were passive re- 
cipients of these stories, and the more they read the 
weaker grew their minds. The result of this sort 
of reading is mental imbecility. Better, instead of 
it, to walk in the fields, to dig potatoes, or to talk 
with the first man you meet. 

I do not mean to say that novel-reading is neces- 
sarily bad. It was formerly thought wrong to read 
novels at all ; or, at least, wrong to read anything 
but the regular moral romance : the writings of Miss 
Edgeworth, Miss Burney, and the like. But novels 
in which the moral is too prominent are usually not 
so influential as those in which it comes, as in life, 
out of the incidents themselves. "The Vicar of 
Wakefield " has not any moral which compels your 
attention. " Don Quixote " has no obtrusive moral. 
But who can read the first and not sympathize with 
the good man, who, with all his ignorance of the 
world and its ways, commands our respect by his 
honorable purposes and his loyalty to truth and 
right. So, while we read " Don Quixote," we smile 
at the folly of the good knight with the surface of 
our mind, and love and honor him in the depths of 
our heart, for the magnanimity and nobleness of his 
character. We smile at him, but respect him. 
Such books make us feel how much better is in* 



316 SELF-CUL TURE. 

ward purity and uprightness than any mere knowl- 
edge of the world or outward success. That is their 
moral, and it is a great one. But it is nowhere 
stated in so many words. 

The great merit of Walter Scott's novels is their 
generous and pure sentiment. There is a strain of 
generosity, manliness, truth, which runs through 
them all. They nowhere take for granted mean- 
ness; they always take for granted justice and 
honor. Now this is the real, though subtle, influ- 
ence which comes from novels, poems, plays. This 
indirect influence, this taking for granted, is the 
most influential of all. Some books take for granted 
that man is selfish and mean. Others take for 
granted that he is noble and true. Some assume 
that all men are led by selfishness, and all women 
by vanity. Such books are deeply immoral, no 
matter what good maxims are tacked to them. For 
our standard of right and wrong is usually that of 
the public opinion just around us, and the books we 
read create a part of that public opinion. Such 
works as those of Dickens have gone into public 
opinion, and have been the guides of the public con- 
science. They have made us all feel the duty of 
caring for such poor orphans as Smike ; they have 
made us love the lowly; they have infused an 
aroma of generous feeling into the public mind. 
Catholics have their confessors, and those priests 
whom they call their directors, to whom they go to 
tell them what they ought to do. Such writers as 



CULTURE BY READING AND BOOKS. 317 

Scott and Dickens are the directors of the public 
conscience. Well when they direct it aright. 

Novels are good or bad, like other books. To 
ask whether we ought to read novels is like asking 
whether we ought to go into society. Choose your 
associates ; choose your books. Do not read any- 
thing and everything because it is printed. Mean- 
ness, cynicism, cruelty, falsehood, get themselves 
printed. Protestant countries have no index of 
prohibited books, no restraint on unlimited print- 
ing. It is all the more necessary that each one 
should examine for himself the character of what 
he reads, and find what effect it has on him. 

Let him that readeth understand. " Weigh and 
consider." 

I return to the maxim to which I referred above, 
non multa, sed multum. Eead much, but do not read 
many things. Select the great teachers of the race, 
the great masters, and read them. Eead Bacon, 
Milton, Shakspeare, Dante, Homer, Herodotus, 
Thucydides, Schiller, Goethe, Lessing. Do not 
read about these authors in magazines, but read 
the authors themselves. He who has once care- 
fully read Bacon's "Advancement of Learning," or 
Milton's " Areopagitica," or the " Phcedo " of Plato, 
has taken a step forward in thought and life. We 
read many criticisms on books ; it were better to 
read the books themselves. Who, in visiting Ni- 
agara, instead of looking at the majestic cataract 
itself, would wish to see it reflected in a mirror in 



318 SELF-CUL TURE. 

a camera obscura ? Drink at the fountain, not from 
the stream. Eead Pope, rather than Dr. Johnson's 
account of him. Eead Milton before you read Ma- 
caulay's article on Milton. Eead Goethe, and then 
Carlyle's essay on Goethe. Literature tends too 
much to diluted and second-hand reading. Instead 
of great books, we read the reviews of books, then 
articles on the reviews, then criticisms on those 
articles, then essays on those criticisms. 

It is an epoch in one's life to read a great book 
for the first time. It is like going to Mont Blanc 
or to Niagara without the journey or the expense. 
When I was a boy I lived in the country, and had 
constructed for myself a reading-room amid the mas- 
sive limbs of an old chestnut-tree. There I retired, 
and spent long mornings in reading the plays of 
Shakspeare, the " Paradise Lost," the songs of Burns, 
the poems of Wordsworth or of Walter Scott. I 
immersed myself in them. The hours passed by, 
the sun sank lower toward his setting, the shadows 
moved on ; entranced in my book, I read and no- 
ticed nothing. To read a good book thus is an 
event in one's life. 

I once spent a long day in reading the Book of 
Job in the translation of Noyes. I had never read 
it before from the beginning to the end. It was a 
day much to be remembered. I beg of you to take 
such books as these when you have time enough, 
and read them through ; else you cannot know how 
great they are. Such books are not meant to be 



CULTURE BY READING AND BOOKS. 319 

read as serials, or to be issued in monthly numbers. 
To read Milton's " Paradise Lost," take a long sum- 
mer's day. Go into the country, and sit in the woods 
alone. Read on and on, and give the whole day to 
it. Only so can you realize the majesty of that 
muse, — 

" Sailing with supreme dominion 
Through the azure depths of air," 

— the genius which paints in turn the sublime hor- 
rors of hell, the tender beauty of paradise, — 

" The spirits and Intelligences fair 
And angels waiting on the Almighty's chair." 

In reading a book, you will notice that besides 
the thoughts, besides the visible moral, it has a soul, 
a leaven of character. The words of a book may be 
very moral, but the tone immoral. The words may 
be religious, but the tone sceptical. For the religion 
may be a mere smooth, cold crust over a deep run- 
ning tendency to doubt ; the morality may be ex- 
hortation to correct conduct coming out of a spirit 
which does not believe in right or wrong. That 
book, to me, is not moral which is stuffed with 
moral maxims, or in which good people end by 
getting rich and prosperous ; but that which makes 
goodness seem both beautiful and possible ; which 
makes it seem worth while to live, that we may live 
generously and nobly. That book to me is religious, 
not which exhorts us solemnly to become pious un- 
der penalty of going to hell if we are not, but in 



320 SELF-CULTURE. 

which love to God and man seem natural, easy, and 
beautiful. 

A book may be religious without being Christian. 
The religious feeling which pours itself out in ex- 
pressions of awe, reverence, fear, remorse, trust, is 
nearly the same in all lands, all times, and all relig- 
ions. Something of it is to be found in Buddhism, 
in Mohammedanism, among the Hindoos and the 
Chinese. But Christianity adds the element of faith 
in God as a living friend, close to us, who cares for 
us all, loves all his children, and whose true service 
is not solemn ceremonies or tremendous sacraments, 
but doing good to the poor, the lonely, the down- 
trodden, the oppressed. The spirit of Christianity 
is the spirit of Jesus. When a book has not the 
spirit of Christ, it is none of his, though it may be 
full of religious notions, and may be popular enough 
to reach a hundred editions. The book which has 
in it the spirit of Christ is an apostle of Christian- 
ity, though it be a novel by Dickens, or a poem by 
Tennyson. 

Biography, history, and travels give us more in- 
formation than any other kind of works. They 
should be read together. One illustrates the other. 
And I think these are the books to read in classes. 
The best way of learning history is to have a class, 
in which a certain period of history shall be the 
subject of the lesson, and each member of the class 
read in a different book about that period. Then, 
when they come together, each has something to tell 



CULTURE BY READING AND BOOKS. 321 

to the others, and something to learn from them. 
And, in like manner, it is well to form classes to 
read other works and pursue other studies, for so 
the stimulus of society and co-operation aids the 
solitary study which accompanies it. 

I will close these remarks with a few rules to 
assist in reading to advantage. 

1. One rule is, to read what interests you. In- 
teresting books are those which do us good. Unless 
a book interests us, we cannot fix our attention to it. 
Unless we attend to it, we do not understand it, or 
take it in. Then, we are wasting our time on a 
merely mechanical process, and are deceiving our- 
selves with a show devoid of substance. 

The best books are the most interesting. Those 
which are clearest, most intelligible, best expressed, 
the logic of which is the most convincing ; which 
are deepest, broadest, loftiest. Therefore, read the 
books on subjects which interest you, by the best 
writers on those subjects. 

The two finest prose essays in the English lan- 
guage are Lord Bacon's "Essay on the Advance- 
ment of Learning," and Milton's tract on "The 
Freedom of the Press." And these are also inter- 
esting to that degree that, having once read them, 
you will never forget them. 

The most interesting books, as regards their sub- 
jects, are well-written biographies and well-written 
books of travels. The one shows us human nature, 
the other the world and life. Therefore the undying 

21 



322 SELF-CULTURE. 

charm of such works as " Plutarch's Lives," Xeno- 
phon's " Memorabilia of Socrates," Johnson's " Lives 
of the Poets," the biographical essays by Macaulay 
and Carlyle, and the like. 

This rule of reading what is interesting is so im- 
portant, that it is a good appendix to the rule to 
stop reading when we find we cannot fix our atten- 
tion and are reading mechanically. Por to read 
without attention is to form a habit of inattention. 
To read without interest, will tend to a loss of in- 
terest in all reading. To go through the mechanical 
form of reading when our mind is not in it, weakens 
the mental powers, and does not strengthen them. 

Therefore, select the best and most interesting 
books to read. 

2. The check on this rule, which will prevent its 
abuse, is another ; namely, " Eead actively, not pas- 
sively." 

A person may be deeply interested in a sensa- 
tional story, but it is often a purely passive interest. 
He does not think about what he is reading. The 
result is a momentary excitement, and after it is 
over he has received injury rather than good from 
it. He is less fit to think or to act than he was 
before. 

We should always, in reading, exercise memory, 
judgment, and the faculties of comparison and rea- 
son. We should repeat in our own words the sub- 
stance of what we read, take notes of it, converse 
about it, fix it in our memory, discuss it with others, 



CULTURE BY READING AND BOOKS. 323 

and compare it with other books on the same sub- 
jects. This takes time ; but it is far better to read 
a few books carefully and thoroughly, than many 
books superficially. Good books should be read 
again and again, and thought about, talked about, 
considered and re-considered. So, at last, what we 
read becomes our own. 

3. Therefore, there should be a third rule ; namely, 
to read with some system and method. Arrange 
circumstances so as to keep yourself up to your 
work. One method is for two persons to read the 
same book, and to meet together to talk about it. 
I read a large part of Goethe and Schiller and some 
other writers in this way, in company with Mar- 
garet Fuller, spending two or three evenings every 
week at her house, talking with her about what we 
had been reading. An extension of this method is 
to form a class to read on certain subjects ; for ex- 
ample, a new book, a period of history, a country 
and people, a system of philosophy, a science, and 
then to meet and discuss together this common sub- 
ject. Such a class might be formed in connection 
with every book-club. Where this cannot be done, 
a person might, at least, have a note-book, and 
write down the heads of what he reads, and his own 
thoughts about it. To these notes he would after- 
ward refer with pleasure and advantage. 

If a person, in the course of some yearn, should 
read in this way such writers as Shakspeare, Milton, 
Bacon, Locke, Gibbon, Wordsworth, and our best 



3 24 SELF-CUL TURE. 

American writers, "he would, by this method alone, 
acquire a good education and a large intellectual de- 
velopment. Any one important book read in this 
way would enlarge amazingly the sphere of one's 
knowledge. I knew a gentleman who read thus 
" Carlyle's History of the French Eevolution;" look- 
ing up every event, person, and place referred to, 
and taking notes of all, and thus he became thor- 
oughly versed in the whole history of modern Eu- 
rope. 

Let us be thankful for books. I sympathize with 
Charles Lamb, who said that he wished to ask a 
" grace before reading " more than a " grace before 
dinner." What a consolation to the self-denying 
life of that good son and good brother were his 
books ! 

Let us thank God for books. When I consider 
what some books have done for the world, and what 
they are doing, how they keep up our hope, awaken 
new courage and faith, soothe pain, give an ideal life 
to those whose homes are cold and hard, bind to- 
gether distant ages and foreign lands, create new 
worlds of beauty, bring down truth from heaven, — I 
give eternal blessings for this gift, and pray that we 
may all use it aright, and abuse it never. 

Thank God for books, — 

" Those stately arks, that from the deep 
Garner the life for worlds to be ; 
And, with their glorious burden, sweep 
Adown dark Time's untravelled sea." 



XV. 

THE EDUCATION OF COURAGE. 



XV. 

THE EDUCATION OF COURAGE. 



COURAGE is the most universally admired of 
human qualities. Only be brave, or seem so, 
and men will respect you, women admire you, and 
children worship you. Hence there are so many 
sham forms of courage, so many imitations. Man- 
liness is so good a thing, that all that simulates it 
has a certain prestige. Courage is a fundamental 
faculty, on which the whole of human attainment 
rests, as on a solid basis. To defy danger, encoun- 
ter difficulties, despise hardships, risk evil in the 
pursuit of what is good, true, and noble, — this is 
a motor which carries the world onward. If we 
would be of any use, we must not be afraid of re- 
sponsibilities ; we must be ready to run a risk of 
failure, to expose ourselves to be misunderstood; 
to encounter opposition, censure, dislike. All true 
life is a warfare. He who would be true to himself 
and his own convictions, who has a desire to obey 
his conscience, and be a law to himself, will imme- 
diately find himself in the heat and thick of battle. 
Drift with the current, think as others think, let 



328 SELF-CULTURE. 

your thoughts keep the main track, say what all 
men are saying, and no warfare is necessary. But 
stir an inch from the beaten road, attempt any im- 
provement in anything, a thousand prejudices are 
aroused, and all vested interests become alarmed. 
Therefore, while we admire courage, we shrink a 
little from the courageous man. We know it is a 
great quality, and that it is required for all good 
conduct. We admire it, but fear it. 

But how enchanting are all tales of prowess, all 
stories of adventure, of heroic achievement, of dan- 
gers dared ! Courage is the theme of Homer, Yirgil, 
Spenser, Walter Scott; and, to come down lower, 
you will find the little boys reading stories of noble 
pirates and chivalric robbers, and feeding their poor 
little minds with this amazing trash, which is just 
now poured from the press in the form of boys' 
newspapers. For courage is so attractive, that when 
you cannot get the real article, even the counterfeit 
is accepted. Rudeness, vulgarity, brutal language 
are cultivated by boys in order to give themselves 
the air of manliness. For this end they learn to 
smoke tobacco, to drink intoxicating liquor, to use 
profane language. These evil habits are cultivated 
in order to acquire the semblance of manliness. As 
you pass through the street to-morrow, out of every 
ten men you see, one or two will be poisoning the 
air with the fumes of tobacco, and distributing these 
noxious vapors into the faces of those they meet. 
Of these thousands of smokers, hardly one formed 



THE EDUCATION OF COURAGE. 329 

the habit without pain and difficulty. It was ex- 
cessively disagreeable at first ; but then it seemed 
manly, and, therefore, desirable. There is, of course, 
nothing specially courageous or manly in exciting 
or stupefying the nervous system with this narcotic ; 
but to boys and youths it seems so, and therefore 
they begin the habit, which afterwards becomes a 
comfort sometimes, or a necessity. 

If courage is thus universally admired, and if, in- 
deed, it is so important an element in all human 
virtue, why has it been regarded rather as a Pagan 
than as a Christian virtue ? 

Certainly, courage is, and always has been, as 
necessary to the Christian as to any one else. If 
you define a Christian as one who is trying to be 
good and to do good, then, certainly, he needs cour- 
age for both these tasks. There will be fightings 
without, and fears within, to encounter every day. 
He may not be provided with bowie-knife or re- 
volver. He may not wrestle with flesh and blood. 
But he will be pretty sure to come into conflict 
with the rulers of the darkness of this world ; that 
is, those who depend on popular ignorance for their 
success. He will have to fight with "spiritual 
wickedness in high places ; " that is, with enthroned 
falsehoods, erroneous public opinion ; dangerous 
influences in society, in church and state. The in- 
genuous youth who admires pirates and prize-fight- 
ers may see nothing of manliness in this, but in 
reality it requires no little courage to fight the good 



330 SELF-CULTURE. 

fight of faith. Horatius Codes defending the bridge 
was not more heroic than Martin Luther on his way 
to Worms. The brave men who die in battle sel- 
dom need as much courage as that bank cashier 
who recently, in Maine, endured a slow martyrdom, 
rather than reveal the secret of the safe and betray 
his trust. Marshal ISTey, " the bravest of the brave," 
was no braver than many a fireman who penetrates 
through smoke and flame into the burning building 
to save property and life, and dies, perhaps, in the 
fulfilling of that duty. Honored be all courage 
shown for noble ends, and in the discharge of patri- 
otic duty ! Honored forever be the courage of the 
three hundred at Thermopylse, of the six hundred 
who rode into the jaws of death at Balaclava ; of the 
heroes who fell at Fort Wagner, at Gettysburg, and 
all those whose precious memory makes our land 
more rich and sacred ! But honor also to the same 
great element of courage, whatever weapon it uses, 
or to whatever humble scene its task may call it ! 
It is needed all day long in common life, that we 
may not shrink timidly from difficulties, but en- 
counter them ; that we may not postpone our duties, 
nor make excuses for our neglect, nor evade telling 
the truth when it is disagreeable to others, or in- 
volves mortification to ourselves ; that we may be 
loyal to our friends, to our cause, and to our convic- 
tions, when the opinion around us is hostile to them. 
We are seldom called to encounter great dangers ; 
but, if we have the courage of our opinions, we are 



THE EDUCATION OF COURAGE. 331 

always in danger of being ridiculed or scolded, or 
having disagreeable encounters with overbearing 
people, or positive people, or dogmatists. 

One of the evils of cowardice is that it tends to 
falsehood. Fear is the mother of lies. Slaves, living 
in terror, defend themselves by lying. A tyrannical 
schoolmaster educates his scholars to concealment, 
dissimulation, subterfuge. A religion of terror 
creates hypocrites. Under despotic governments, 
which reign by producing fear, the soil is under- 
mined by conspiracy, stratagems, and secret treason. 
Only courage is truthful ; cowardice is always false. 
Therefore, free governments are good, for in them all 
evils come quickly to the surface and can be cured. 
Therefore, the parents who win the confidence of 
their children by treating them as friends, are safe 
from the dissimulation which is born in households 
where sternness and severity govern. Liberal Chris- 
tianity has its defects and its faults ; but, at least, it 
educates men to courage, and the offspring of cour- 
age, honesty, and truth. 

That conscience is a source of courage appears 
from many instances. It is evident that, in the 
story of the Good Samaritan, the good man was 
willing to stop and run the risk of the return of 
the robbers by delaying his journey, because it was 
a matter of conscience with him to give effective 
help to the sufferer. An impulse of kindness would 
merely have led him to give some temporary aid, 
and then to hurry away to send relief. Sir Samuel 



332 SELF-CULTURE. 

Komilly, one of the great reformers of the English 
law, rode out of his garden gate one morning, on 
horseback, on his way to London ; and his favorite 
dog rushed out after him, and by his actions Sir 
Samuel Eomilly soon became convinced that the 
dog was mad, or going mad. He rode by his side, 
near the dog, thinking how he should prevent mis- 
chief. He would not ride on, and call others to his 
aid, lest they should be bitten. It would not do to 
let the dog get on the main road to London, crowded 
with people. So, when he reached the gate of a 
friend's garden, he rode up to the dog, threw him- 
self upon him, caught him by the neck, raised him 
in the air so as to prevent him from getting away, 
held him in the air with one arm while he opened 
the gate, went in. called for a chain, fastened one end 
to a tree and the other to the dog's neck, and then 
threw him toward the tree, and so prevented him 
from doing harm. Now, this was courage born of 
conscience. Conscience would not allow this good 
and brave man to call for help. The dog was his 
own ; he himself must run the risk. 

We shall never cultivate our courage if we sup- 
pose it is only needed on the rare occasions in which 
we may be called to risk our life, or encounter great 
peril. The only way to educate this power for great 
occasions is to practise courage in all the small events 
of life. We shall train ourselves to bravery only 
by having the courage to tell the truth, to do what 
is just, to adhere to our convictions in the midst of 



THE EDUCATION OF COURAGE. 333 

the strain and stress of business, the turmoil of 
the world, and the performance of every-day du- 
ties. And certainly Christian faith will help us 
to do this. 

The mediaeval idea of Christ was of one who came 
to suffer and die, not resisting or opposing evil. The 
mediaeval idea of Christianity was of passive submis- 
sion to all evil and wrong. The mediaeval saint was 
not one who fought bravely the battle of life, but one 
who retired from the world to live in a monastery 
a life of self-denial and prayer. That mediaeval no- 
tion of Christianity has come down to our time, and 
it is often assumed that Jesus taught and practised 
only the passive virtues of meekness, long-suffering, 
patience, submission to wrong, and non-resistance. 
No doubt he told his disciples not to resist outward 
evil with outward evil ; not to retaliate wrong with 
wrong; not to fight for truth with the sword. And, 
no doubt, it was very necessary at a time when 
the Messiah was expected to be an outward deliv- 
erer, a warlike king, to show in the most convincing 
way that he was not the prince of war, but the 
prince of peace. And if, now, we are to overcome 
evil with good, we must not begin by attacking it 
with evil. "Love your enemies, bless them who 
curse you, do good to those who despitefully use 
you and persecute you," is as much the Christian 
duty now as then. "We must not resist wrong with 
wrong, but we must resist it with right. 

And certainly the real Jesus, the Jesus of his- 



3 34 SELF-CUL TURE. 

tory, was anything but a mediaeval saint, with head 
bowed down like a bulrush. He was not at all like 
a sheep dumb before its shearers. His short career 
was passed amid a storm of opposition, which he 
faced with a manly courage of the highest order. 
He exposed the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, and en- 
countered all their rage alone. Alone, for he had 
no one to understand him, no one on whom he could 
lean. Yet he went straight forward on his appointed 
course, without hesitation, opposed by all parties, — 
Scribes and Pharisees, whose power was threatened 
by his influence ; Sadducees, whose worldliness was 
rebuked by his lofty morality ; Herod and his fol- 
lowers, to whom the name of any Messiah was a 
danger ; the mass of Jewish zealots, who hated Eome, 
because he preached forgiveness to enemies and a 
peaceful kingdom. Amid all this tumultuous tem- 
pest of ill-will, he went straight forward, foreseeing 
his death at hand, but determined to do his work, 
and declaring with his last breath that he was in- 
deed a king, since he had come to bear witness t<? 
God's truth. There certainly has never been greater 
courage than this. And the reason that we do not 
notice it is that in the wonderful harmony of thai 
divine character no one trait is ever prominent, but 
always one is balanced by its opposite, — courage by 
prudence, humility by self-reliance, tenderness by 
firmness, love to God by love to man. 1 

1 Since this lecture was delivered, an excellent book developing 
the same idea has been written by Thomas Hughes, called " The 
Manliness of Jesus." 



THE EDUCATION OF COURAGE. 335 

Nor has there ever walked on this planet a braver 
man than Paul. He, also, passed his life amid op- 
position both from foes and friends. The other 
apostles could not understand the breadth of his 
view, and had no sympathy with his liberal Chris- 
tianity; so that he, also, was almost alone, hardly 
ever understood. How touching is his account of 
his career : " In journeyings often ; in perils of wa- 
ters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own 
countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in 
the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the 
sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and 
painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, 
in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Besides 
those things that are without, that which cometh 
upon me daily, the care of all the churches." And 
yet, I suppose that the greatest courage of all was 
when he was obliged to oppose the Apostle Peter to 
his face, and accuse him of dissimulation at Antioch, 
and so probably to offend mortally all the followers 
and friends of that apostle. No wonder he said to- 
ward the end of his life, " I have fought a good 
fight ! " Did Hannibal or Napoleon ever show more 
courage than he ? 

One reason why Christianity has not been thought 
favorable to courage is, as we have said, that we still 
believe, more or less, in the mediaeval type of Chris- 
tianity, which made it passive, not active ; submis- 
sive, not aggressive ; a life of humble endurance, not 
an energetic assault on evil. 



336 SELF-CUL TURE. 

And another reason is that Christianity is really- 
opposed to a great deal which passes for courage. 
It opposes caution to rashness, sensibility to in- 
sensibility, modesty to boldness, and reverence to. 
audacity. 

For rashness is not courage. Eashness flings itself 
into danger without consideration or foresight. But 
courage counts the cost, and does not make any dis- 
play of itself, but, when the hour comes, is prepared 
to meet it. 

Nor is insensibility to danger the same as cour- 
age. Insensibility* is a brute quality, not a manly 
one. It comes from ignorance, stupidity, want of 
imagination, or habit. There is no courage in en- 
countering peril which we do not see, in going into 
danger of which we have no feeling. The surest 
test of courage, presence of mind, cannot coexist 
with brute insensibility. The sense of fear is neces- 
sary to all real courage. He who says, " I was never 
afraid," says at the time, " I have no real bravery." 
Not to be destitute of fear, but to be able to control 
it, to be self-possessed in the midst of danger, — this 
alone makes the real hero. The sense of danger is 
at the heart of all sublime courage, all heroic self- 
devotion. Montaigne tells us of a king of Navarre 
who, when his attendants were arming him for 
battle, was trembling with excitement; and they 
tried to compose him by saying that the danger 
would not be very great. But he answered : " You 
understand me very little ; for, could my body know 



THE EDUCATION OF COURAGE. 337 

the danger my courage will presently carry it into, 
it would sink down to the ground." 

Nor is audacity courage. That boldness of man- 
ner which is affected by coarse minds, that over- 
bearing assumption which seeks to carry all before 
it by an air of defiance, is seldom able to stand up 
before true courage. True manliness is modest, not 
audacious. It makes no pretence, utters no threats, 
but, when the time comes, it speaks and acts with 
power. There is a power in its eye before which 
audacity breaks down. They tell a story of General 
Jackson, who, when he was a judge, was holding a 
court in some small settlement. One of the despe- 
radoes, who then were often to be found in the West, 
a border-ruffian and murderer, came into the court- 
room with brutal violence and interrupted its pro- 
ceedings. The judge ordered him to be removed. 
But, as he was a desperate man, and armed to the 
teeth, the officer hesitated to arrest him. " Call a 
posse," said the judge, " and arrest him." But those 
who were called also shrank from attacking the ruf- 
fian. " Call me, then," said Jackson. " This court 
is adjourned for five minutes ; " and, going directly 
to the man, ordered him to drop his weapons, which, 
after a moment's doubt, he did, afterward saying, 
" There was something in his eye that I could not 
resist." This was true courage conquering audacity. 

All these other qualities which pass for courage 
— rashness, insensibility to danger, audacity, bold- 
ness — are natural ; but true courage is an accom- 
22 



338 SELF-CULTURE. 

plishment. It is acquired by discipline and educa- 
tion. It consists in self-possession, self-control, 
presence of mind, and devotion to what is true and 
good. It has its root in conscience. It is said by 
Shakspeare that "conscience make cowards of us 
all;" but when it makes us fear evil, it lifts us 
above all other fear. Conscience in the soul is a 
fortress which no power of man can conquer. It 
lifted poor, cowardly Peter, who had just denied his 
Master, to that height of heroism that he could say 
to the assembled court of his nation : " Whether it 
be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you 
more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but 
speak the things we have heard and seen." It has 
enabled women and children, in all ages, to endure 
a martyr's death, when one word would have saved 
their lives. Conscience in the soul is the root of all 
true courage. If a man would be brave, let him 
learn to obey his conscience. 

The love of truth, also, is associated with courage. 
He who loves truth desires to utter it, whether men 
will hear or whether they will forbear. He has 
what is called the courage of his opinions. Truth, 
strong in itself, makes men strong. A clear convic- 
tion in the mind gives strength and courage to the 
weakest person. He who believes in the eternal 
laws of the universe; who does not believe in chance 
or luck, but in reason ; who therefore pursues with 
unfaltering step the flying footsteps of truth, — he 
is lifted above fear. Some men have this belief in 



THE EDUCATION OF COURAGE. 339 

truth, in fact, in reality, so strong that they trust 
themselves to their convictions, and are safe. They 
stand firm on their instincts. 

We must, however, admit that rashness often 
takes the color of courage in the domain of thought. 
It is now common to talk of " brave thinkers," mean- 
ing by this merely those who are ready to deny all 
received truths, and accept anything which is un- 
usual. Because courageous thinkers are often her- 
etics, and are obliged to oppose the common belief, 
it is assumed that any one who opposes the common 
belief becomes thereby a courageous thinker. Be- 
cause most men receive, without inquiry, all tradi- 
tional belief, many think it brave to reject all 
traditional belief without inquiry. I often receive 
newspapers published in the interest of freedom 
of thought. The honest men who publish them 
announce that the object of their periodical is to 
oppose received views, whether in religion, morals, 
family life, finance, labor. They simply propose 
to abolish the Christian religion, do away with 
wages, overturn the banking system, make it un- 
lawful to take interest on money, and put an end 
to marriage. Having accomplished this, they will 
then look round for something else to do, and end 
by requesting a subscription of twenty-five cents for 
their journal. These writers seriously believe them- 
selves to be "advanced thinkers." They mistake 
rashness for courage, denial for discovery, sweeping 
criticism for thorough examination. ~' 



340 SELF-CULTURE. 

Such errors, however, soon cure themselves. They 
should not make us suspicious of free inquiry, for the 
world cannot move forward except by the fullest and 
freest examination. The education of courage is to 
be faithful to our convictions and our duties in small 
things. Peter was courageous enough to draw his 
sword to defend his Master, but not courageous 
enough to encounter the ridicule of the soldiers and 
the handmaidens in the priest's hall. As much 
courage is shown by a child who tells the truth, 
when it is hard to do so, as by a soldier going into 
battle. If we would be brave on great occasions, 
we must begin by being courageous in small ones. 
If you do not fear ridicule, unpopularity, or being 
called singular, you will be prepared to encounter 
the gallows or stake, if those should be necessary. 
He who is faithful in little will be faithful also in 
much. 

The conventionalities of society educate us to 
cowardice. To most of us it may be said, as in the 
play : " Thou art a blessed fellow to think as every 
one thinks. Not a man's thought in the world 
keeps the roadway better than thine." A breeze of 
free thought coming into a church, a drawing-room, 
or a political convention makes the air pure for a 
long time. 

We all shrink, like cowards, from new duties, 
new responsibilities. We do not venture to go out 
of the beaten track of our daily life. Close to us, 
on each side of the road, are those whom we might 



THE EDUCATION OF COURAGE. 341 

help or save with one good action, one kind word. 
But we are afraid. "We say : " I am not prepared ; 
I am not ready ; I have not time ; I am not quali- 
fied; find some better person; send some one else." 
Perhaps we have only one talent, and, therefore, in- 
stead of using it, we hide it, and when the Master 
comes we shall meet him with the old answer : " I 
was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the 
earth. Lo ! there thou hast that is thine." 

Therefore, that conscience may act freely, let us 
add to it faith. If the Lord calls us to do any good 
thing, let us believe that he will give us strength 
with which to accomplish it. Be strong in the 
Lord, and in the power of his might. Wait on the 
Lord, and he will strengthen thine heart. This 
simple trust in God turns cowards into heroes ; 
takes away all fear ; gives a calm confidence, and 
enables one to go to the most difficult and danger- 
ous tasks with hope and assurance. The Puritans 
in England, who trusted in God, beat the Cavaliers 
on every field. Wesley was amazed at the calm- 
ness of the Moravian women in the midst of an 
awful storm at sea ; but they said, " Why should 
we fear ? We trust in God." " The Lord is my 
salvation, whom shall I fear ? the Lord is the 
strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid ? " 

This is the way to cultivate courage : First, by 
standing firm on some conscientious principle, some 
law of duty. Next, by being faithful to truth and 
right on small occasions and common events. Third, 



342 SELF-CULTURE. 

by trusting in God for help and power. Such is 
the man 

" Whom neither shape of danger can dismay, 
Nor thought of tender happiness betray ; 
Who, not content that former worth stand fast, 
Looks forward, persevering to the last, 
From good to better, daily self-surpassed." 



XVI. 

ON FINISHING EVERYTHING; OE, 
THE TWO EXTRA PENNIES. 



XVI. 

ON FINISHING EVERYTHING; OR, 
THE TWO EXTRA PENNIES. 



I HAVE always specially admired, in the story of 
the Good Samaritan, the closing incident : " On 
the morrow, when he departed, he took out two 
pence, and gave it to the host, and said, Take care 
of him, and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I 
come again I will repay thee." 

That last delicate touch given to the portrait of 
the man of Samaria marks the consummate artist. 
It completes the picture, and makes it perfect. It 
suggests, in the finest fashion, the advance from 
conscience to love. It shows that the motive of the 
good man was not merely to do his duty, though 
that lay at the root of his conduct ; but also the de- 
sire to help the wounded man, and to help him 
thoroughly and effectually. Here is the superiority 
of love over conscience in human affairs. If I am 
only trying to do my duty to my neighbor, I may 
say, " How much must I do ? " which means, " How 
little may I be allowed to do ? " But, if I love, I 



346 SELF-CULTURE. 

say, " How much can I do ? What more ? What 
next ? " " Love," says the Apostle, " beareth all 
things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, en- 
dureth all things." It works without any limits 
except the outward limits of occasion and oppor- 
tunity. It is like a fire, which burns as long as 
there is anything to burn. When it has done all, 
it still considers itself an unprofitable servant, and 
says, " I have not done half I should like to do." 

It is this little surplus, this unnecessary but 
lovely finishing touch, which makes the perfection 
of character. Without it, excellence may be hard, 
cold, and mechanical. The beauty of holiness comes 
with the unexpected gift which no one had any 
right to claim, — the two pennies extra, — which 
add the completing charm to the beauty of holi- 
ness. 

The late Henry Ware told me that, when he went 
to Europe, he took many letters of introduction. 
But, after delivering one or two, he made no fur- 
ther use of them; for he found that, when he 
brought a letter of introduction, all that was done 
for him was done from a sense of duty. The man 
who received it looked embarrassed, and seemed to 
be saying to himself, " How much am I obliged to 
do for this gentleman ? How little will answer ? " 
Afterwards, instead of handing his letters, he called 
and introduced himself, saying, " I am an American ; 
I have heard of you in America, and wished the 
pleasure of seeing you." Then the personage so ad- 



THE TWO EXTRA PENNIES. 347 

dressed felt free to do as much or as little as he 
liked, and generally liked to do a good deal. 

I, myself, had such an experience once. On the 
summit of the Flegere, a mountain which one as- 
cends in order to view Mont Blanc and his surround- 
ing glaciers and peaks, I met an English gentleman, 
and fell into conversation with him. He found I 
was interested in pictures, and made me promise to 
visit him, on my return to London, and see his pri- 
vate collection of the works of Turner and other 
modern artists. I did so, and he devoted whole 
days to showing me galleries which I could not 
otherwise have seen. He felt toward me exactly 
as the good Samaritan felt toward the Jew of 
Jerusalem when he took out the two pence, and 
said, " Take the best care of him ; I will be respon- 
sible." 

All excellence of character begins in conscience 
and the sense of duty. That is the deep root which 
is indispensable to its life and growth. Any benev- 
olence which rests only on sentiment is like a tree 
without a root. Sooner or later it dries up and is 
withered. The storm will blow it down. Neverthe- 
less, unless we have something more than a root, 
our tree is not a tree. It must grow up out of the 
root into the stalk, leaf, flower, fruit ; that is, out of 
conscience into love. 

As there is no beauty to a root, as all the beauty 
of a plant is in its stalk, leaf, flower, so all the 
beauty of a good action resides in that part of it 



348 SELF-CULTURE. 

which is spontaneous, free, and loving. What at- 
tracts us is that. I feel little gratitude, though I 
may feel much obligation, to a man who helps me 
from a sense of duty. But I am grateful, above all 
things else, for love. If any one is generous, is 
kindly, is glad to distribute, ready to communicate, 
he attracts all hearts to himself. Such an one 
makes goodness seem really good. God, it is said, 
loves a cheerful giver, and love is always cheerful. 
Man, also, loves a cheerful giver. No one likes to 
see good done gloomily, grudgingly, and of neces- 
sity. 

Jacob Abbott, whose books show such a perfect 
knowledge of the nature of children, somewhere 
gives these four rules for parents : — 

1. When you refuse, refuse finally. 

2. When you consent, consent cheerfully. 

3. Often commend. 

4. Never scold. 

Children, in fact, can be led anywhere, and made 
to do anything, by those whom they love. They 
are said to be ungrateful ; and so they are for all 
that is done for them from duty; all the usual 
regular care taken of them they accept as a matter 
of course. But only do something unexpected for 
their happiness, and you win their hearts. Tell 
them a story, take them to see a sight, do anything 
for them which shows that you take an interest in 
them and in their pleasure, and you acquire an un- 
bounded influence over them. I do not mean that 



THE TWO EXTRA PENNIES. 349 

you are not to be firm and decided. " When you 
refuse, refuse finally." Do not say, " Well, my dear, 
I think, on the whole, you had better not go out. 
I'll think of it, and perhaps I'll let you go by and 
by. I am afraid you will take cold. I had rather 
not have you go ; but, if you insist on it, I suppose 
you must." Do not say that, but either say " No," 
and end there, or else say " Yes, if you wrap your- 
self up, it will be all right, and I hope you will 
have a pleasant time." 

These are the two extra pennies which constitute 
a large part of the joy and good of life. 

Some people fail from attempting so much, and 
never accomplishing anything. Finishing a thing, 
doing it thoroughly before we begin anything else, 
is very important to our own happiness and the 
good of others. " The end crowns the work," said 
the practical Komans. Better to finish one small 
enterprise than to leave many large ones half done. 

Nature finishes everything, and that makes a 
large part of her charm. Every little flower is per- 
fect and complete, from root to seed. Every leaf 
which will open in the next spring-time will have 
its little ribs and edges as exactly and completely 
finished as if it were the only leaf God intended to 
make in the whole year. 

Let us learn to do everything as well as we can. 
That turns life into art. The least thing, thoroughly 
well done, becomes artistic. It is a fine art to walk 
perfectly well, not in the heavy, mechanical way in 



350 SELF-CULTURE. 

which most of us walk. It is a fine art to speak 
well, to articulate distinctly, to pronounce correctly, 
to use the right word and not the wrong one. Any- 
thing complete, rounded, full, exact, gives pleasure ; 
anything slovenly, slip-shod, unfinished, is dis- 
couraging. 

It is said of Washington Allston that once having 
dressed for a party, and being on his way to it, he 
suddenly stopped because he remembered that there 
was something out of order in his dress, which no 
one would see. But he himself would know that 
the defect was there. That was enough. He went 
home, and gave up his visit rather than go in a 
slovenly costume. 

This may have been an extreme instance of the 
artistic feeling of the perfect. That, in this artist, 
this sense of perfection outweighed the power of 
production, appears from the fact that he was never 
able to finish the picture which was to be his 
masterpiece. He left it, after many years of labor, 
in an incomplete state. His ideal was so high that 
it palsied his hand. He could never satisfy himself. 
This is one danger. The sense of the perfect, the 
complete, may prevent us from doing anything, 
because we cannot do as well as we can imagine 
and conceive. This often becomes a real drawback 
on goodness. Because I cannot do a work as well 
as it ought to be done, I do nothing. Because I 
cannot help the poor, the suffering, the sinful, as 
much as they need to be helped, I do nothing. This 



THE TWO EXTRA PENNIES. 351 

is an error on the other side. I once heard Dr. 
Tuckerinan, the first minister-at-large in Boston, 
describing the case of a family of which the husband 
and father was an intemperate man. Dr. Tuckerman 
said that he had never been able to make him leave 
off drinking entirely. But he had succeeded in 
inducing him to stop for weeks at a time. Said he, 
" If I could not do more, I was glad to do that. It 
was a great thing for his family that he should 
abstain for many weeks together. A few weeks of 
comfort and peace were worth a great deal to 
them." 

Nevertheless, an important part of culture is to 
acquire the habit of finishing every work. Work 
which is not finished is not work at all. The differ- 
ence between active work and active idleness lies 
just at this point. Idleness begins many things 
with vast energy and enthusiasm ; but becomes dis- 
couraged, soon tires, and leaves its employment half 
done to begin something else. Work does not stop 
till it has completed its task. 

This want of fixed purpose you will often notice 
in children before they have formed the habit of 
labor. Watch a boy on his holiday. He has deter- 
mined to make something or do something. He 
thinks he will dig his garden all over. He begins 
with great energy, but soon becomes tired of this 
hard work. It occurs to him that he wants to make 
a boat. He drops the spade, and goes to the tool- 
house. But after he has worked with chisel and 



352 SELF-CULTURE. 

saw and knife for half an hour, this task also be- 
comes uninteresting, and he decides that what he 
really wishes is to read his new book. He reads for 
a while, and then concludes that it is best to go 
fishing. So the day is frittered away, and nothing 
is accomplished. Worse, there remains in the even- 
ing a weariness born of this irresolution, and the 
absence of results. 

A good deal of the happiness of life comes from 
the sense of accomplishment. God has mixed a 
feeling of content with everything finished. Every 
one enjoys an accomplishment. If you have half 
learned two or three languages, you take little 
pleasure in them ; but if you have learned one, so 
as to read or speak it easily, this accomplishment 
brings pleasure. A man who has learned to do 
anything well, enjoys doing it. This is the lure 
which wise Nature uses to lead us to finish our 
work. 

One advantage of sending children to school is 
that they can be kept in their classes at one study 
till they have really learned something. What a 
pleasure to a child when he has learned his alphabet 
or his multiplication-table ; when he has mastered 
his geography, so as to really know the countries of 
Europe, Asia, and America; when he has become 
familiar with the history of some nations ; when he 
can read with ease a Latin book or a French one ; 
when he can write a neat and legible hand ! There- 
fore, a wise teacher prefers to teach his classes a few 



THE TWO EXTRA PENNIES. 353 

things thoroughly, rather than many things imper- 
fectly. For everything perfectly learned is a spur 
to further acquisition ; while all cloudiness and con- 
fusion left in the pupil's mind discourages him, and 
takes away the nerve for study. 

Nor do I object to giving prizes for the best work 
done, for it leads persons to do their best, and exer- 
cises them in aiming at perfection. 

It is a great thing for a young person to recog- 
nize the charm of perfect work, finish, complete- 
ness. It is a celestial inspiration which lifts the 
soul above worldly vanities and low ambitions, and 
will ennoble the whole of life. Not to do merely 
what others do, not to satisfy the demands of the 
world, but to aim at an ideal good, makes true 
manhood. 

At this point, the highest human wisdom joins 
hands with the best religious teaching. All human 
greatness is the result of patient continuance in 
well-doing ; of earnest, noble endeavor ; of extraor- 
dinary generous seeking. And what does the New 
Testament continually teach, but that we should 
endeavor to be perfect as our Father in heaven is 
perfect ; not to pray, nor to give alms, nor to do any 
good work, to be seen of men ; but privately, secretly, 
to be seen of God. Always we are to bear about in 
our heart the pure ideal which we pursue, never 
condescending to anything below our best stand- 
ard of right. The power of Christianity shows 
itself in taking the humblest souls, and filling 

23 



354 SELF-CULTURE. 

them with, this purpose of infinite good. A poet 
has said : — 

" A vast idea rolls 
Before me, and therefrom I glean 
My liberty." 

We are set free from all lower influence when we 
accept the control of this commanding beauty. 

Much of the joy of life consists in doing well 
everything which we do. We have no real satisfac- 
tion in our work until we have given the extra two 
pence, and so completed it. If the Samaritan had 
gone away without doing that, he would have been 
dissatisfied with himself. He would have said, " I 
have taken a good deal of trouble about that man, 
but, perhaps, it will end in nothing. The innkeeper 
may turn him into the street, and so all my pains 
will be thrown away." But he finished his good 
action, and left it perfect behind him, for an ever- 
lasting joy and blessing to mankind. 

This is why the New Testament lays so much 
stress on finishing every good work. It tells us not 
to be weary in well-doing, for in due season we 
shall reap, if we faint not. " We are the house of 
Christ, if we hold fast the confidence, and the re- 
joicing of hope unto the end." " If any man draw 
back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him." 

Love to God and love to man are the only motives 
which will last. We must take a real interest in 
those we do anything for, in order not to get tired of 



THE TWO EXTRA PENNIES. 355 

i>ur work Some ministers get tired of their parishes 
after they have been with them a year or two, and 
are always changing. It is often because they do 
not take an interest in the work and in the people 
for their own sake. 

When a man says, " I have done my part, now let 
some one else come and take my place," it is evi- 
dent he never really was interested in what he was 
doing. 

Let us all enlist for the war. Let us never be 
contented to give up any good work until nothing 
remains but to take out the two pence and give to 
the host ; and so to make arrangements that the 
work shall go on well after we have gone away. I 
do not recollect that I ever heard a mother watching 
by her sick child, a wife watching by her sick hus- 
band, say, " I have been here three days and nights. 
I think I have done about my share of watching ; 
let some one else come and take my place." No ! 
but the divine power of love supplies new strength 
to mind and body, enables her to go without rest, 
without sleep, and she never thinks for a moment of 
giving lip her place to another as long as anything 
remains to be done. 

Perfect honesty, in like manner, is never satisfied 
with doing as much as is expected, as much as 
is customary. After it has done that, it takes out 
its two pence and gives them to the host. This 
makes a man who has been released from a debt, 
and who is afterward able to pay it, pay all thp 



356 SELF-CULTURE. 

interest with. it. Such completeness shows that it 
is because he loves honesty, not because he wishes 
to appear honest. It is the same with truth. A 
perfectly truthful man, who loves truth for its own 
sake, is not contented with being as truthful as 
other people. He wishes to be entirely accurate, — 
to have truth in the inward parts, and truth in its 
perfect outward utterance. Dr. Johnson said, "If 
your boy says he looked out of one window when 
he looked out of another, give him a whipping." 
"We have outgrown whipping, but the idea is still 
a true one. This is the " two pence " in truth-tell- 
ing which makes it perfect and entire, wanting 
nothing. It is the distinction of modern science 
that it loves truth in this way. It verifies every- 
thing. I have a book, published about two hundred 
years ago, which gives the scientific notions of that 
day. Among other statements, it tells us how two 
people may correspond at a distance : Take two 
magnets and support them like compass needles, so 
that they may turn freely, each around a card circle. 
On the circumference of each circle write the 
twenty-four letters of the alphabet. Then, if a 
man has one of these magnetic needles and cards in 
Eome, and another man has the corresponding one 
in England, and they wish to converse, they have 
only to turn one of the needles so that it will point 
to a certain letter, and the other will turn imme- 
diately to the same letter. The only difficulty was 
that the author had not taken the trouble of trying 



THE TWO EXTRA PENNIES. 357 

the experiment, to see if it would work. The chief 
difference between ancient and modern science is 
that the last verifies everything ; that is, puts truth 
into it. " Man," says Lord Bacon, " the minister 
and interpreter of nature, does and understands as 
much as he can observe of the order of things or of 
the mind, and can know and do nothing more." To 
love and serve the truth, and to surrender to it 
our own opinions, makes the man of science. To 
serve and love beauty, and renounce our own fame, 
makes the artist. To serve and love goodness, 
and forget our own selfish advantages, makes the 
Christian. 

If in man justice is to be swallowed up in love, 
how much more in God ! If our goodness consists 
not in doing what strict justice requires, but a great 
deal more, how far beyond any mere justice must 
the divine love go ! If the charm in men and 
women which makes us love them is in this super- 
fluity of good-will, this giving all they have and 
doing all they can, how can we love God unless we 
see the same element in him ? We are the poor 
traveller, wounded by our sins, left half-dead in our 
helplessness and loneliness, with no power to do 
anything for ourselves. God is not like the priest 
nor like the Levite. He does not come and look on 
us, and then pass by. He does not say, "Do this, 
do that, or perish forever." He knows we can do 
nothing till he helps us to do it, and, therefore, like 
the Good Samaritan, he comes to us. He does not 



358 SELF-CULTURE. 

wait till we are able to come to him. He comes to 
every one of us, and pours some oil and wine into 
our wounds. Sometimes the oil and wine consists 
in human sympathy which God sends to us in our 
sorrow ; human love, which he sends to us in our 
loneliness. Sometimes it is an opportunity of doing- 
good to some one else which relieves our heart of 
its own gloom. God's spirit is like the wind, which 
comes and goes a thousand ways, running on no 
narrow railway track, but in various manners softly 
breathing around us. It is in all that moves the 
heart, to awaken its better purposes, and to make 
things new there. 

It does not run in the narrow railway track of 
the church only ; the means of grace are not merely 
Sundays and sermons, prayer-meetings and revivals : 

" Sometimes a light surprises 
The Christian while he sings," 

and sometimes as bright and sweet a light surprises 
the sinner in his tears. Sometimes it is the aspect 
of nature, the heavenly peace of a summer's day, 
the innocent face and voice of a little child in his 
play, the beauty still more divine on the face of our 
dead friend in all the rapture of its repose. God can 
speak to the heart by anything, — by a weed, a 
grain of sand, a dream. He " who rebuked a prophet 
by the voice of an ass, and warned his apostle by 
the crowing of a barn-door fowl," can make the 
meanest thing the channel of his love. 



THE TWO EXTRA PENNIES. 359 

Moreover, if God finishes everything in nature, if 
he is the consummate artist who makes the rhodora 
beautiful in the wood where no human eye can see 
it, and paints in exquisite tints the shell on the 
floor of the ocean, we may trust that he will not 
rest till he has made all our souls and all our lives 
pure, generous, noble, beautiful. We are as yet 
only the ugly roots of a future beautiful plant. The 
best man or woman is only a shoot a little way out 
of the ground. We are God's plants, God's flowers ; 
be sure that he will help us to unfold into something 
serenely fair, nobly perfect, if not in this life, then 
in another. If he teaches us not to be satisfied till 
we have finished our work, he will not be satisfied 
till he has finished his. He will not be satisfied with 
simply binding up our wounds, by leading us to 
repent, with simply pouring in the oil and wine of 
his forgiving love. He will also set us on his own 
beast, and bring us to the inn, and take care of us 
there ; and if he seems to go away and leave us, if 
his spirit sometimes seems to disappear again out of 
our hearts, he will have left the two pence with the 
host, and seen to it that all that we need we shall 
certainly have at last. 

If we can believe this of God, then we can love 
him as we love our father and mother, as we love 
our friend, in whose answering love we have perfect 
confidence. Such a confidence in God as this is 
alone the source of genuine piety. Not till we cease 
thinking of him as justice, as power, as sovereign, 



360 SELF-CULTURE. 

as king, not till we are able to trust in him as one 
who means to save us perfectly, and unfold us into 
all the strength and beauty for which he has de- 
signed us, can we love him with all our heart, and 
our brother man like ourselves. 



XVII. 
EDUCATION OF THE WILL. 



XVII. 
EDUCATION OF THE WILL. 



BEFOEE explaining how the will may be edu- 
cated, I must first show that it is capable of 
education. Many think that strength of will is a 
purely constitutional matter, a question of organiza- 
tion, a natural endowment. Some persons, they 
say, are born with strong wills, and they carry 
everything before them ; others, with weak wills, 
and they give way before every one else. Will, so 
they think, is only a matter of organization and 
temperament. 

This opinion is very strongly expressed by Mr. 
Emerson in an essay on Power. " Success," he 
says, " is a constitutional trait." " Courage is the 
degree of circulation of the blood in the arteries." 
" This affirmative force is in one and not in another, 
as one horse has the spring in himself, and another 
in the whip." " When one has a plus of health, all 
difficulties vanish before it." "Success is, there- 
fore, constitutional ; depends on a plus condition of 
mind and body, of power of work, on courage, and 
is of main efficacy in carrying on the world." 



364 SELF-CULTURE. 

It is very certain, I readily admit, that some 
men are born with great force of will, and others 
with weak wills. It is also very certain that you 
cannot, by any amount of discipline, of education, 
make an Andrew Jackson, a Napoleon, a Martin 
Luther, out of a man born with a feeble will, any more 
than you can make a piece of oak timber out of a 
pine log. Such men as I have mentioned were cre- 
ated with a vast amount of organic force ; and that 
is something not to be manufactured by any school, 
any training, any culture. 

But the point is here. If this organic strength, 
hidden in the convolutions of the brain, and in the 
force which drives the blood thrpugh the arteries, is 
not born of education, may there not be another 
kind of force of will which can be thus created ? 
And may not this latter kind be the better kind ? 

We have seen, in our past lectures, that many 
other human powers have a physical basis in the 
organization, but also a moral basis in the soul. 
We have seen that there is a physical courage and 
a moral courage ; a natural conscience and an edu- 
cated conscience; a good nature, located in the 
bodily disposition ; and a good temper, which comes 
from culture and discipline. There are instinctive 
perceptive powers, and educated powers of percep- 
tion. There is instinctive reverence, belonging to 
the organization ; and an educated reverence, which 
is developed by conviction, insight, and self-devo- 
tion to the highest good. Now, we ask, " Is strength 



EDUCATION OF THE WILL. 365 

of will also of two kinds, — one kind natural, or- 
ganic, instinctive, belonging to the brain and blood ; 
and the other the growth of purpose, culture, dis- 
cipline, and a religious conscience ? " I think it 
can be shown that there are these two kinds ; that 
strength of will can be cultivated, and that such an 
educated will constitutes a greater power to endure 
and to do, than that which merely comes from the 
natural organization. 

Mr. Emerson is no doubt right in declaring that 
there is a constitutional force of will which in- 
sures success. But success does not come merely 
from constitutional forces : if it did, the savage 
would not retire before the civilized man. Culture 
adds a new force to nature. The early white set- 
tlers of Kentucky soon became more than a match 
for the Indians in everything wherein the Indian 
excelled. They learned to know the forest signs as 
well as the Indian, or better; they became better 
marksmen, quicker in their perceptions, more rapid 
in their actions ; and in a struggle hand to hand 
they could master the Indian. Education in the 
white man had added a force to nature. Nor is it 
always true, that " for performance of great mark it 
needs bodily health ; " for men like John Calvin and 
Robert Hall, William Pitt, Pope, and William of 
Orange, King of England, were all invalids, and all 
did great things. Of the last, Macaulay says : " From 
a child he had been weak and sickly. In the prime 
of manhood his complaints were aggravated by se- 



366 SELF-CUL TURE. 

vere disease. His slender frame was shaken by a 
constant cough. Severe headache frequently tor- 
tured him. Exertion soon fatigued him. . . . Yet, 
through a life which was one long disease, the force 
of his mind never failed to bear up his suffering and 
languid body." Dr. Johnson makes the same re- 
mark concerning Pope, that " his life was one long 
disease." The incessant labors of Calvin were pur- 
sued amid continual bodily pain and ill-health. Dr. 
Kane, who suffered all his life from severe maladies, 
was one of the most active explorers of our day. 
He climbed the Himalayas, descended into an un- 
explored crater of a mighty volcano, ascended the 
Nile to a great distance, traversed Greece on foot, 
studied the glaciers in Switzerland, visited Dahomey 
in Africa, fought like a hero in the Mexican war, 
and ended his career by the immense labor and ex- 
ertion of his Arctic voyages. Mr. Emerson is, there- 
fore, not wholly correct in saying that " if Eric is in 
robust health, has slept well, and is thirty years old 
at his departure from Greenland, he will reach New- 
foundland. But take out Eric, and put in a stronger 
and bolder man, and the ships will, with just as 
much ease, sail six hundred, a thousand, fifteen 
hundred miles further." " Sickness is poor-spirited, 
and cannot serve any one ; it must husband its re- 
sources to live." 

Plutarch tells us that Julius Caesar, the greatest 
of soldiers, statesmen, writers, rulers, "was of a 
slender make, fair, of a delicate constitution, and 



EDUCATION OF THE WILL. 367 

subject to violent headaches and epilepsy." But 
this did not prevent him from becoming the master 
of the world. 

What, then, constitutes strength of will ? It is 
that quality of the mind which is prompt to decide, 
and, having decided, cannot be moved from its pur- 
pose, but holds on through evil report and good 
report ; overcomes obstacles ; shrinks from no diffi- 
culty ; relies on its own judgment ; does not yield 
to fashion, — and so presses to its mark always. 

Strength of will is the power to resist, to persist, 
to endure, to attack, to conquer obstacles, to snatch 
success from the jaws of death and despair. It is 
the most vital element in character. It is essential 
to excellence ; for of him who has it not it must be 
said, " Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel." A 
man of weak will is at the mercy of the last opin- 
ion ; is unable to make up his mind, or, having 
made it up, to keep to it. He is undecided, and 
cannot decide. He sees the right, and drifts to- 
ward the wrong. He determines on a course of 
conduct, and then quits it on the first temptation. 
Weak as a breaking wave, a helpless idler, wax to 
take a stamp from anything stronger than himself, 
if he adopts a right course, it is only by accident ; 
and if he is virtuous, it is only a piece of good 
luck. 

Some races are gifted by nature with strong 
wills ; what they will, they will powerfully ; what 
they do, they do with determination. Our Yankees 



368 SELF-CULTURE. 

inherit this trait from their English forefathers, and 
the stern discipline of two centuries of hardship and 
struggle have strengthened it. Woe to the child 
who happens to be born with a weak will in New 
England ! His is the fatal error in all eyes in our 
energetic community. To be inefficient or shiftless 
is the unpardonable sin, to the mind of a born New 
Englander. 

But there are dangers from this quality of will. 
Unless guided by conscience, it becomes wilfulness. 
It makes despots and tyrants, and there are tyrants 
in all circles of society. Men and women who have 
will-power in excess tyrannize in their families, in 
society, in business. They must have their way in 
everything ; they must always take the lead. They 
dogmatize, and are overbearing in conversation and 
among their associates. They have too much confi- 
dence in themselves and their own judgments, and 
so are in danger of making grave mistakes. Failure 
and ruin may come from too much will as well as 
from too little. Mere strength, unguided by wis- 
dom, tends to destruction. But the power of self- 
restraint, self-denial, renunciation of private wishes 
before a great commanding good, — these are the 
secrets of the highest power. When a man is able 
to rise above himself, only then he becomes truly 
strong. 

We have had an illustration of the two kinds of 
will in two of our presidents, — General Jackson and 
Abraham Lincoln. General Jackson was gifted by 



EDUCATION OF THE WILL. 369 

nature with immense force of will. It made him 
successful in war and public life. It was an en- 
ergy whish few could resist. It brought him into 
innumerable difficulties, and usually brought him 
out of them triumphantly. It was the cause of 
great mistakes and great successes. His independ- 
ence caused him to refuse to vote to thank Wash- 
ington for his services as President ; made him re- 
sist his whole party in his opposition to the United 
States Bank, and carry his point, in spite of friends 
and enemies ; led him publicly to defend Aaron 
Burr when he was on trial, though he had before 
offered his services to the Government to arrest 
him. His force of will once saved his arm, which 
the medical men had determined to amputate. It 
led him to take the responsibility without fear, 
whether he was right or wrong. It made him a 
great general, but a dangerous President. His 
strong will was often wilful, and guided by passion 
and prejudice more than by reason. 

On the other hand, we have an illustration of ed- 
ucated will in Abraham Lincoln. How slowly, how 
hesitatingly he moved at the beginning of his presi- 
dency ! Very different from Jackson, he devolved 
responsibility on others, leaving to soldiers to man- 
age the war, and leaving to his secretaries full power 
in each of their departments. Though always op- 
posed to slavery, he refused to pledge himself to 
take any active steps against it until the time 
seemed fully ripe. Slow to decide, when he had de- 

24 



370 SELF-CULTURE. 

cided he was firm as a rock in mid-ocean. He 
weighed beforehand difficulty and opposition, but 
never shrank from them when they came. He 
carefully counted the cost before he acted; but 
when he decided to act, all his hesitation disap- 
peared. Far inferior to Jackson in natural strength 
of will, he far surpassed him in the firm and un- 
yielding pursuit of great ends, not his own, by 
conscientious means. Jackson was a mighty power, 
going like a cannon-ball to its end, — 

" Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it 
reaches." 

Lincoln's force was that of a river, sure to reach 
the ocean at last, because obeying the eternal laws 
of God, but winding around obstacles, patiently 
lingering along savannahs and morasses, never stand- 
ing still, never forgetting its end. His was the 

" Supple-tempered will, 
Which bent, like perfect steel, to spring again and thrust." 

Jackson was honest no less than Lincoln, and 
both were illustrations of Horace's " just man, tena- 
cious of his purpose, who fears neither the rage of 
the people nor the threats of the tyrant." Jack- 
son's career was like that of a wild storm, violent 
and destructive, though sublime ; while that of Lin- 
coln was as the shining auroral light of a near 
morning, which shines more and more unto the per- 
fect day. 



EDUCATION OF THE WILL. 371 

Natural force of will differs from the educated 
force of will in beiug more liable to be blinded by 
passion and prejudice, to be led out of its true 
course by caprice, and enslaved by personal ambi- 
tion to selfish ends. It is self-will rather than free- 
will. Thus blinded by egotism, it no longer acts 
according to the eternal laws, and plunges into 
fatal mistakes and ruin. 

The man in modern times who combined the 
strongest will with the most powerful intellect was 
the first Napoleon. But an uninterrupted course of 
success darkened the majestic mind of this great 
egotist, and led him at last to irretrievable destruc- 
tion. But history tells us of another great French 
captain, who, though a woman, ignorant of war, dis- 
played unparalleled military skill, awakened bound- 
less enthusiasm, went straight forward from triumph 
to triumph, and won the greatest triumph of all in 
her martyr death, so becoming 

" The whitest lily on. the shield of France." 

Her unbending force of purpose, which overcame 
all obstacles, was animated by pure patriotism, un- 
selfish devotion to her country, and a simple trust 
in God. Therefore were revealed to her, an inno- 
cent child, secrets of power which had been hidden 
from the wise and prudent statesmen of France and 
from all its bravest soldiers. 

All imperialism seems doomed to destruction. 
By imperialism I mean a mighty will joined to a 



372 SELF-CULTURE. 

powerful intellect, and guided by selfish ambition. 
Imperialism in France has gone down twice into 
ruin. Whoever seeks to acquire all power in his 
own hands for personal ends, whether he is an im- 
perial banker or railroad king, an imperial orator, 
politician, statesman, editor, merchant, speculator, 
man of science, — seems surely destined to decline 
and fall. Force of will joined with intellect, but 
without conscience, carries such men up to a great 
height of popularity and power ; and then, blinded 
by their own success, they commit errors which 
bring them suddenly to the ground. 

Self-reliance, self-restraint, self-control, self-direc- 
tion, these constitute an educated will. If the will 
iy weak, it must be taught self-reliance ; if it is 
wilful, it must have restraint ; if it is violent, it 
must acquire self-control ; if it is without any true 
aim, it must be educated to self-direction. Free- 
dom is self-direction. No one is really free who 
cannot guide himself according to his own deliber- 
ate judgment ; a man who has no principles, there- 
fore, cannot be free. Such an one is like a ship 
without compass or chart, sure to drift where the 
winds blow it or the currents drive it. The poor 
drunkard is the slave of the bottle. He knows that 
it is his ruin; but it says to him "Drink," and he 
must obey. But Napoleon was no less the slave to 
his ambition. He knew that his campaign in Eussia 
was beset by unknown dangers ; he saw the awful 
abyss before him ; but ambition said, " Go forward 



EDUCATION OF THE WILL. 373 

and try to become king of the world ! " and he was 
obliged to obey. He was drunk with ambition. 

The two diseases of the will are indecision or 
weakness of will, and wilfulness or unregulated 
strength of will. The cure for both is self-direc- 
tion according to conscience and truth. 

Weakness of will, or indecision, arises from dif- 
ferent causes. One is a disproportion between the 
ideal and the practical faculties. This is best 
shown in Shakspeare's Hamlet. He is unable to 
decide, because he has too many ideas together 
in his mind. A man who sees only one thing, 
easily makes up his mind. But one who, like 
Hamlet, sees both sides of every subject, often can- 
not decide to take either side. Is the ghost really 
his father's ghost, or is it not a false demon sent 
to lead him astray ? He cannot decide. Does it 
bring airs from heaven or blasts from hell ? Is its 
intent evil or charitable ? Impossible for him to 
make up his mind. This is the disease of excessive 
mental education, when the intellect is cultivated 
out of proportion to the active powers. The nat- 
ural cure for this is action, work, daily returning 
duties, which must be done, about which there can 
be no hesitation, no delay. 

Another source of weakness of will is a defect in 
the power of concentration; inability to fix the 
mind on one subject, and to hold to it till it is 
done. Many persons are so made that they no 
sooner have begun one thing than they are beset 



374 SELF-CULTURE. 

by the insane desire of doing something else. They 
are allured away by every accident. The cure for 
this disease is to shut off all extra work, and keep 
to your own. Narrow the channel of your stream, 
and it will run with greater power. Keep to your 
point. Eemember the saying of Christ, " One thing 
is needful." One thing, always, is needful; all 
others are secondary and auxiliary. Do the work 
first which is next at hand. "Do your nearest 
duty," say Goethe and Carlyle; but the Book of 
Ecclesiastes said it long before, "Whatever thy 
hand finds to do, do it with all thy might." 

There is an anecdote related of himself by Alfi- 
eri, in his very interesting autobiography, descid^ng 
the way in which he compelled himself to keep at 
his work. Being very fond of horses and of riding, 
he often left his desk and writing to take an ex- 
cursion. No matter what resolution he made, the 
temptation of a fine day was too strong to be re- 
sisted. So he directed his servant to tie him in 
his chair, and to fasten him by knots he could not 
himself loosen, and then go out of sight and hear- 
ing for a certain number of hours. Thus Alfieri 
was obliged to keep at his desk. He adds that to 
avoid the ridicule of his being found by chance vis- 
itors thus fastened, the servant covered him with 
a cloak before departing. Thus the higher nature 
conquered the lower. 

What force of will has been shown by great dis- 
coverers, — by Franklin, Parry, Kane, in their Arc- 



EDUCATION OF THE WILL. 375 

tic journeys, by Livingstone and Stanley in their 
African explorations. Such histories show us how 
much man can do and bear, sustained by a firm 
determination. It makes us stronger ourselves to 
read of such strength. 

Discipline, no less than concentration, is a cure 
for a weak will. There is great power of strength 
in habitual work. The day-laborer, who takes his 
tin pail in his hand every morning, and goes to 
his work, feels new power, self-respect, and hope 
coming into his soul. He has a mission, a duty, a 
place in God's universe. He stands high above the 
luxurious idler who, three or four hours later, turns 
on his bed and says, " I wonder what I shall do to- 
day ! " The ruts of human life are full of healing 
for sick souls. We cannot be always taking the 
initiative and beginning life anew. We need to 
be carried forward by our daily work, as the boat 
is taken down by the current of the stream. Daily 
work is one of the blessed influences which keep 
the soul strong and sane. 

Necessity is a great power to help us all. We 
are saved by work, and we are made to work by 
necessity. The necessary tasks of life give un- 
known power to the will. There was a story in 
our family, which I used to hear when a boy, that 
Governor Brooks, when an officer in the Revolu- 
tion, received an order from General Washington 
to go somewhere, when he was lying helpless from 
rheumatism. He replied that he was unable to 



376 SELF-CULTURE. 

go. General Washington sent back his order, " Sir, 
you must go!" Then Colonel Brooks mounted 
his horse, and went, and did the required work. 
Here, also, the ascendency of Washington's supreme 
soul enabled his subordinate to make the effort. 
Whatever Washington commanded must be done. 
A weak soul weakens us, a strong soul strengthens. 
Plutarch tells us that the immense influence of 
Julius Csesar made heroes of his subordinates. 
Common men, says he, became invincible when 
serving Csesar. One man, in a sea-fight, had his 
right hand cut off, but pushed on and won the 
victory. A private soldier in one engagement 
plunged into a morass, and helped to beat off the 
enemy, but lost his shield. Caesar ran to meet 
him with a shout of joy, but the soldier, in tears, 
begged pardon for the loss of his shield. I was 
told by Mr. Speed, Abraham Lincoln's attorney- 
general, that after the battle of Fredericksburg, 
Lincoln alone for many days furnished a supply 
of faith and hope to the nation. Hundreds of 
leading men, from all parts of the country, went 
sadly into his room, and came out cheerful and 
hopeful. 

The will of Michael Angelo was strong, but if 
that of Pope Julius had not been stronger, we should 
not have had that greatest work of human art, the 
Prophets and Sibyls of the Sistine Chapel. Michael 
Angelo refused positively to paint the walls, because 
he did not understand painting in fresco. The Pope 



EDUCATION OF THE WILL. 377 

insisted, and Angelo then went to work, made his 
own colors, mixed them, tried them, learned how to 
paint, and having thus taught himself the art, pro- 
ceeded to excel all that had ever been done in it 
before, and also all that has ever been done since. 

But the great physicians for all weakness and all 
wilfulness, for all the diseases and imperfections 
of the will, are reason, conscience, and faith. The 
sight of what ought to be done, the feeling that 
whatever ought to be done must be done, and the 
trust that whatever must be done God will help us 
to do, — these great agencies turn our cowardice 
into courage, and help us to say, " When I am weak, 
then I am strong." To renounce one's own private 
will gives to the will the highest power. 

Animated by great truths, weak women have not 
feared to die the death of martyrs. In a great cause 
not their own, men have gladly perished. Inspired 
by the commanding sense of duty, they have accom- 
plished the impossible. And in how many scenes 
of common life do not these great powers strengthen 
the weak, restrain the strong, give self-control, self- 
restraint, self-direction ; teach men to deny them- 
selves, to conquer appetite, to rise above their 
besetting sins. Faith in God is the source of all 
power. Before a soul inspired by this faith, the 
animal strength of a Napoleon or a Jackson is only 
weakness. This is the force to make the human 
mind invulnerable and invincible. He who fears 
God has no other fear. Insight, conscience, and 



378 SELF-CUL TURE. 

faith are the powers which rule the world. If you 
would educate your will to real arid permanent 
strength, it will be by their inspiration. Submis- 
sion to duty and God gives the highest energy. 
He who has done the greatest work on earth, said 
that he came down from heaven, not to do his own 
will, but the will of Him who sent him. Who- 
ever allies himself with God is armed with all the 
forces of the invisible world. That is why King 
Herod feared John, a captive in his hands, " know- 
ing that he was a just man." Mere power shrinks 
and trembles in the presence of conscience. So 
Comus, in Milton's poem, says when the lady 
speaks : — 

" She fables not ; I feel that I do fear 
Her words, set off by some superior power." 

This is the divine influence which is able to create 
strength out of weakness, and cure all the diseases 
of the human will. 



XVIII. 
EDUCATION BY MEANS OF AMUSEMENT. 



xvm. 

EDUCATION BY MEANS OF AMUSEMENT. 



THE subject of this chapter is the Education 
which can be given by means of Amusements ; 
or, Eecreation as a Source of Culture. 

Perhaps it may surprise some persons to hear 
that amusements may become a means of culture. 
But it ought not to surprise us. The love of play 
and sport shows that amusement is evidently one of 
the original instincts of human nature, and, indeed, 
of the whole animal creation ; and such instincts 
are not implanted in vain. All young creatures 
play. Dogs are very fond of play ; kittens play by 
the hour ; insects, birds, fishes, play in the air, in 
the water, among the trees. And by play they 
develop their faculties, quicken their senses, acquire 
alacrity of perception, rapidity of movement, power 
of attack and defence. I saw, the other day, as I 
passed over the Common, some fine dogs, which had 
been confined, I suppose, all the morning in the 
dog-show, brought out by their owner to take a run 
on the open Common. Nothing could exceed the 



382 SELF-CULTURE. 

evident delight which they took in the mere exercise 
of their limbs in the fresh air. They coursed up 
and down at full speed in every direction, darting 
away to the furthest part of the Common, and then 
back like the wind to their master, and away 
again. The passers-by smiled in sympathy with 
their joy. 

Animals enjoy playing, and do a great many 
things merely for amusement. A kitten plays with 
a ball of thread, or chases its tail, from this impulse 
of sport ; a dog will enjoy himself by the hour in 
running after what you throw, and bringing it to 
you. Even whales are often seen at play in the 
ocean, tumbling over in the water, and throwing 
their huge carcasses into the air in pure fun. There 
are birds which arrange bowers and gardens for 
their amusement. Thus all through creation runs 
this alternation from work to play, from play to 
work. Even animals which seem to be all work 
and no play, like bees and ants, probably have their 
recreations. 

The instinct of play in man is stronger and deeper 
than in animals ; for it is as universal in childhood, 
it develops into a greater variety of forms, it con- 
tinues during life, it grows up into various fine arts, 
and is at the basis of many noble works. Many 
trades depend on it ; people get their living out of 
it, and work to enable others to play. 

The plays of children evidently grow out of a 
deep instinct. The ancient tombs of Egypt, which 



EDUCATION BY MEANS OF AMUSEMENT. 383 

contain the fossil remains of the customs of dead 
races of men, have pictures of children playing top 
and ball, as they do in our streets and on our Com- 
mon. Dolls, like the children's dolls of to-day, are 
found preserved in the tombs, and are to be seen in 
Egyptian museums. In fact, children are very con- 
servative in their games and their toys ; their amuse- 
ments continue mucL the same for thousands of 
years ; their almanac of sports, though unwritten, is 
very precise. Top time, ball time, kite time, marble 
time, return annually, as regularly as spring, summer, 
autumn, and winter. 

The stories told by nurses and mothers to amuse 
children frequently can be traced backward to a 
hoar antiquity. Childhood, says a poet, 

" Has its legends, gray with age, 
Saved from the crumbling wrecks of yore, 
When Northern conquerors moored their barks 
Along the Saxon shore." 

The plays of children make a very important part 
of their education. Their importance, however, has 
been overlooked. Amusements, though constituting 
so large a part of human life, have been thought 
unworthy of the notice of serious people. I have 
looked in vain in the American Encyclopedia for 
any article on toys, or games, or amusements. But 
wise men have not so undervalued this part of 
human life. Montaigne says: "It is to be noted 
that the play of children is not really play, but 



384 SELF-CULTURE. 

must be judged of as their most serious actions." 
Lord Bacon says of games of recreation : " I hold 
them to belong to civil life and education." 

Certainly the love of play was given to children 
as a most important means of education. Any- 
thing which makes them run to and fro, chasing 
and being chased, is intensely amusing to them ; and 
so it develops their muscular power, alertness, quick- 
ness of eye, skill in balancing, in turning round and 
round, watchfulness, patience, and many other facul- 
ties. Out of the four hundred muscles of the human 
body, a large majority are probably exercised in 
these violent games, while regular work only exer- 
cises a limited number. Therefore the Lord sends 
the love of active plays first, in order that all the 
body shall be developed to some extent, and all the 
perceptions roused and quickened. Children have 
an instinctive desire to be in motion, to look at 
everything, touch everything, ask about everything, 
play with everything. This instinct ought not to 
be repressed, but encouraged. It is a great mistake 
to make children sit still long, except sometimes 
that they may learn to sit still. It is, no doubt, 
inconvenient to their elders, this perpetual prying 
activity, this insatiable curiosity, this asking of in- 
numerable questions ; but if they do not do all this, 
how shall they learn ? The Lord made them so, 
and he made them so for good reasons. The child 
does not need much for his amusement ; expensive 
toys are usually wasted on him. Give him a bit of 



EDUCATION BY MEANS OF AMUSEMENT. 385 

string to tie knots in ; something to roll, to push, to 
set up and take down, to take apart and put to- 
gether; a heap of sand, a bunch of sticks, paper 
to tear or to cut, water to sail his boat, sand to dig, 
— and he is fully satisfied. How suggestive is the 
story of the young prince, for whom a box of costly 
playthings had been brought from Paris, who soon 
grew tired of them, and going to the window, said, 
" Mamma, may I go out and play in that beautiful 
mud ? " 

Going on further, the principle of games can be 
used to a much greater extent than it is in the 
training and instruction of the child's mind. " Why 
forbid us to learn by play ? " asks the wise Roman, 
who probably had been told by pedants then what 
we hear from them now, that if you make study too 
pleasant, it will cease to be a discipline. But why 
not introduce into schools games of history, of bi- 
ography, of geography, of chronology, of arithmetic, 
to prepare for which study is necessary. Then, in- 
stead of a class coming out to recite stupidly and 
blunderingly its half-committed lesson, you would 
call the class out to play the game of question and 
answer; and every eye would be watchful, every 
ear attentive, every faculty intent, and the whole 
intellect roused to its highest activity. 1 What could 
be better discipline than this ? Is there any better 

1 This suggestion was already made by Locke, in his admirable 
Treatise on Education, in which so many modern improvements 
in education were anticipated. 

25 



386 SELF-CUL TURE. 

exercise of the intellect than that which calls all its 
powers into the fullest action ? 

This principle has long been practised in schools, 
but only accidentally, not systematically, except in 
the method of Kindergartens. Why not carry it 
further ? When I was a boy at school, mental 
arithmetic was thus taught, and with great success. 
Every boy who gave the right answer went up, all 
who gave the wrong went down ; so we were all 
winning and losing and winning again our positions, 
from the beginning of the recitation to the end. 
Capping Latin verses was also made a game, and 
the boys who would have found it hard to learn 
twenty lines of Virgil as a task, committed to mem- 
ory hundreds of their own accord, in order to be 
prepared for the contest which was to come. 

Moral lessons and moral discipline, also, come 
from games. The intense enjoyment of play enables 
children to support pain, teaches them to obey 
rules, to control themselves, to submit to discipline, 
to bear fatigue without complaint, and so largely 
helps in the formation of character. No doubt chil- 
dren quarrel and scold a good deal during their play; 
but they gradually learn to control their passions, 
repress their anger, be careful of their speech, know- 
ing that otherwise their companions will refuse to 
play with them. Can any one doubt that this makes 
an important part of education ? 

But the instinct of play and the desire for amuse- 
ment is not exhausted in childhood. Grown men 



EDUCATION BY MEANS OF AMUSEMENT. 387 

and women need amusement, also, only of a higher 
kind. The rude games of children are replaced by 
those in which skill, art, taste, appear. Graceful 
dances, artistic and dramatic representations, athletic 
exercises, have existed among all races and in all 
times, and show how deep this instinct goes, and 
that instead of trying to eradicate it, we should seek 
to purify and elevate it. We should substitute for 
low pleasures those of a higher kind; coarse and 
brutal amusements should be supplanted by nobler 
ones ; instead of the pleasures which degrade, we 
should give those which elevate. 

This process has already been going on under the 
influence of civilization and Christianity. You will 
find all over Europe, wherever the Romans extended 
their sway, the remains of vast amphitheatres, where 
the whole population of a city assembled to witness 
the fights of gladiators with each other and with 
wild beasts, and where thousands of human beings 
were often " butchered to make a Roman holiday." 
All that has gone, — gone so far away that we can 
hardly realize that such a state of things ever ex- 
isted. The ferocious bull-fights of Portugal and the 
boxing-matches of the English are also passing 
away. The theatre, though not what it ought to 
be, and can become, is vastly better than it was in 
England or France two hundred years ago. The 
srossness of those times would not now be tolerated 
on any European stage. 

What is needed in order to carry on this reform 



388 SELF-CULTURE. 

is (1st) to admit the importance of the subject, the 
vast influence which amusements exercise on the 
character for good and evil; and (2d) to find out 
how, instead of attempts to suppress and eradicate 
amusements, we can purify and ennoble them. 

When thoughtful and Christian men apply their 
minds to this subject, they will, I think, come to 
these conclusions. 

Amusements are good and not evil in proportion 
as they are (1) Inexpensive, and so within reach of 
all ; (2) Not exclusive, but social ; (3) Not leaving 
one exhausted and with distaste for work, but more 
able to return to work ; (4) Not degrading the tastes, 
but elevating them. 

All these conditions are fulfilled by the recreations 
which are public and free, such as public gardens, 
concerts, libraries, zoological gardens, museums of 
natural history and science, galleries of art. These 
should be provided in all our cities and large 
towns. And this might be carried still further 
by having, in the vicinity of cities, parks where 
various innocent amusements should be provided 
for the people, and in the cities themselves large, 
well-lighted buildings, where there should be halls 
for conversation, for reading, and for games, open 
every evening to the poorest people. This, I am 
satisfied, is the only way to conquer the attractions 
of the saloons, of drinking-places, where poison is 
sold which drives men mad, and leads to murder, 
ruin, and despair. 



EDUCATION BY MEANS OF AMUSEMENT. 389 

Total abstinence is a good thing, as a security for 
those who are in danger, and as the only safeguard 
of those who have become intemperate. Very often, 
the only means of reaching temperance is by absti- 
nence. Prohibition is also a good thing, when an 
evil has reached the height which intemperance lias 
obtained in all modern nations. If I could do it, 
I would not allow a drop of intoxicating liquor to 
be sold in the United States. Not that I think it 
wrong to drink a glass of wine or beer ; but that I 
should think it well to give up half even of the 
comforts as well as the luxuries of life, in order to 
put an end to the frightful evils of intemperance. 
Unfortunately, it has not proved possible to carry 
out any law of prohibition. But if I cannot have 
universal prohibition, I would have local option ; 
and, in addition to that, I would have temperance 
men devise new plans and try new methods. It is 
not enough to induce men to abstain ; we must pro- 
vide some other excitement, some other pleasure to 
take the place of the old one. Negative morality 
is not enough ; self-denial is not enough ; we need 
positive good to take the place of evil. 

A working-man goes from his home early, and 
works all day in the wet and cold. His dinner is 
only cold meat and bread, or some indigestible pie 
or cake. He comes back tired to a dreary and dirty 
home. Is it strange that he should long for one 
hour of pleasure and comfort ? He finds a saloon 
open, warmed and lighted. For a few cents he can 



390 SELF-CUL TURE. 

get a drink which will exhilarate him and cause 
him to feel cheerful. He can here smoke and talk 
with others who have also laid aside care. Is it 
strange that the saloon should be patronized, — so 
long as the community provides no innocent recrea- 
tion as cheerful and pleasant ? 

One of the stories told by Jesus, which exhibits 
in a striking way his consummate wisdom, is of the 
evil spirit, which, having been driven out of a man, 
returned again, when he found the house of the soul 
swept and garnished indeed, but empty. Then, he 
came back into the house, with seven other spirits 
worse than himself, because the house was empty. 
Negative reforms leave the house empty. They take 
away the old excitement, which, poor as it was, did 
fill and occupy the mind, and they substitute 
nothing else. If you would cure men of low en- 
joyments, you must substitute higher ones. If by 
replacing the maddening alcohol with light wines 
and beer I could drive out those dreadful poisons, I 
would gladly do so. For though the use of these 
may, when carried to excess, occasionally produce in- 
toxication, they do not madden and deprave ; they 
do not lead to wife-beating and wife-murder ; they 
do not destroy the moral fibre, and bring men down 
to the level of the beast, and below it. Beasts are 
temperate ; but the intemperate man goes far below 
their level. 

No reform is of any permanent value which is 
merely negative. Self-denial and abstinence are 



EDUCATION BY MEANS OF AMUSEMENT. 391 

only the first steps upward. Every man must have 
something to enjoy ; some recreation for his weary 
hours. The true recreation is that which re-creates, 
which brings back a new life to mind and heart. 
The true refreshment is that which makes the soul 
fresh, strong, vigorous, prepared for new work. 
When amusement is made the end of life, when 
people live for pleasure, then they are dead while 
they live. But we should breathe pleasure as we 
do the air, to strengthen us for work, duty, progress, 
usefulness. 

The Christian Church has in past times been too 
ascetic. Its morality has been of the Jewish kind, 
one of negatives. You must not do this, it said; 
you must abstain from that. This world is a vale 
of tears. Get out of it ; keep away from it. This 
kind of teaching failed, and always has failed, to 
reach that large class who are full of life, health, 
energy, and who wish to exercise their powers. These 
have looked on the Church and Christianity as 
something to be respected, but to be avoided. They 
saw nothing attractive in them. The Church pro- 
scribed dancing and the theatre as immoral and evil. 
But the love of these amusements was too natural a 
feeling to be uprooted. Consequently part of the 
world danced and went to the theatre, and half-felt 
they were doing wrong, and the other part abstained 
and condemned the others. The one class despised 
the other as puritanical, and these condemned the 
others as worldlings. 



392 SELF-CUL TURE. 

But the gospel comes to make all the creation of 
God one,. It is the atonement of the pleasures of 
childhood and the work of manhood, of amusement 
and labor, of this world and the next, of present joy 
and future happiness. It sanctifies play, and makes 
work a source of joy. It smiles on the gayeties of 
the child, and helps the earnest purpose of the man. 
It says, " I pray not that thou shouldest take them 
out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them 
from the evil." Asceticism throws away a great 
power given by God to help and improve us. It 
abandons to evil what might be a vast motor force 
leading to good. John Wesley saw the true prin- 
ciple when he adapted hymns to cheerful tunes, 
declaring that the devil ought not to have all the 
good music. The principle of amusement may be 
used to make all study, all culture, all improvement 
attractive. Thus the study of history has, in our 
day, by Macaulay, Motley, Carlyle, and other writ- 
ers, been made as amusing as novels, — much more 
so, indeed, than the majority of novels. The prin- 
ciple of amusement has even gone into sermons and 
lectures ; and here again we are only following 
Jesus, who made religious and moral instruction 
amusing by putting it into parables ; that is, into 
amusing stories. Many of the proverbs of Solomon 
are very witty and entertaining. Therefore we 
ought to change the mere natural desire for pure 
amusement into the higher enjoyment of amuse- 
ment connected with study and useful labor. A 



EDUCATION BY MEANS OF AMUSEMENT: 393 

certain smile of gayety plays over the face of all 
well-done work. Why should we not do all our 
work cheerfully, instead of doing it gloomily and 
with a sad countenance. Therefore, when Jesus 
commenced his ministry, his first miracle was to 
make wine at the wedding, adding to the gayety and 
mirth of the occasion. There he showed that gayety 
and mirth are acceptable to God, and that there is a 
time to laugh as well as to weep. For doing this 
he was called a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber ; 
but he was not deterred by these calumnies from 
what he thought right. He said, " The Son of man 
comes eating and drinking." If Christianity has 
ever been made to frown on innocent pleasure, to 
denounce this world as evil, to teach ascetic self- 
denial, and to exalt monastic virtues, this was no 
part of the teaching of Jesus. His view was far 
broader than that of his followers ; his morality 
more rich and full ; his sympathy with all human 
instincts and tendencies more universal. He him- 
self lived a life of self-denial, but he asked no others 
to share it, except when necessary for something be- 
yond. Other religions have taught that self-denial 
for its own sake is good ; Jesus only enjoined self- 
denial for the sake of a higher end. 

If, therefore, I am asked whether such amusements 
as dancing and the theatre are Christian, I reply, 
Certainly they are, if they are not abused or carried 
too far. To these and to all other amusements apply 
the rules I before gave : 1. Let your amusements be 



394 SELF-CULTURE. 

inexpensive, so that many may share them. 2. Let 
them be social and open, for whatever is open to all 
eyes is more likely to be innocent. 3. Let them be 
such as do not leave you unfit for your duties, but 
which refresh your weary mind and body, so that 
you can return to your work with renewed strength. 
4. Let them not be such as degrade and corrupt, 
and enslave you to a habit ; but such as elevate, 
strengthen, and purify the soul. The amusements 
which stand these tests are innocent, useful, and 
Christian. The theatre is a great means of influ- 
ence, and the time has come when it should be used 
for good, and not for evil. But this can never be 
done while good people stay away from it, or only 
go incidentally, and leave it to be patronized by 
those who only desire low excitement. The man- 
agers of a theatre are obliged to meet the tastes of 
those who come, not of those who stay away. We 
may assume at once that the drama is so suited to 
the nature of man that it is likely to endure. As 
it cannot be abolished, all that remains to do is to 
elevate it. At present it is allowed to become any- 
thing it will. Plays are often acted, I am told, and 
exhibitions made, in Boston, which would not be 
permitted in Paris ; most things are permitted, — 
vulgarity, profanity, licentious exhibitions, and im- 
moral plots. This is not done because the managers 
prefer it, but because they must suit the tastes of 
their audience. Two methods may be applied to 
cure this evil. First, in licensing the theatre, some 



EDUCATION BY MEANS OF AMUSEMENT. 395 

censorship should be exercised over its representa- 
tions by the city government. No play and no 
exhibition should be allowed of an immoral ten- 
dency. And, secondly, those who really wish to 
reform the stage should unite and agree to patronize 
the theatre as long as it complies with certain con- 
ditions. They might say to the managers and pro- 
prietors, " We will agree to take so many thousand 
tickets for the season on condition that you exclude 
everything vulgar and immoral." Make it profit- 
able to have an innocent drama, and an innocent 
drama will come. But the chief thing to remember 
is this, that mankind need some sort of recreation ; 
that if they cannot have good amusements they will 
have bad ones ; and that therefore it is the duty of 
all, instead of merely condemning wrong and evil 
recreations, to seek to replace them by better ones. 
Let us try to be like God, who opens his hand and 
satisfies the desire of every living thing. He sends 
abounding pleasure to childhood and youth in the 
mere exercise and development of their faculties. 
He makes everything beautiful after its kind and 
in its time ; he covers the prairie with flowers, the 
dawning sky with rosy clouds, and fills the early 
air of morning with the songs of birds. He no- 
where leaves the bare skeleton of utility uncovered 
by the rounded forms of grace. He intends that 
life should be cheerful as well as earnest, full of joy 
as well as of work. He has left a large place in the 
world for recreation and amusement. Let us see 



396 SELF-CULTURE. 

that this is not abused, but used. When he has 
made all the earth to keep holiday, let not our 
hearts be sullen ; but let us sympathize with all 
natural pleasure, all innocent mirth, and so keep 
out whatsoever is evil. " Thou, when thou fast- 
est, be not of a sad countenance, nor disfigure thy 
face," but take thy self-denials gayly and cheer- 
fully, and let the sunshine of thy gladness fall on 
dark things and bright alike, like the sunshine of 
the Almighty. 



XIX. 



EDUCATION OF HOPE, 



XIX. 
EDUCATION OF HOPE. 



THEEE are two kinds of hope : an illusive hope 
— a will-o'-the-wisp, which comes from an 
excited imagination — and a substantial hope, born 
from experience, tears, and wrongs. Patience work- 
eth experience, and experience, hope. It is the pur- 
pose of this chapter to distinguish these, and to 
show how a true hope may be built up in the soul. 

The phrenologists tell us that there is a natural 
organ of hopefulness whose function is to give an 
expectation of good things. Some have more of it, 
others less ; but all have some. It is an especially 
human organ. Animals live in the present. No 
bird or beast tries to improve his condition, or to 
make his to-morrow better than his to-day. Man 
does this, and his power of doing it is the condition 
of his progress, both individual and social. Hope 
may often deceive us, but without it man could 
never have risen out of the savage state. Without 
hope, no culture, no civilization, no progress in 
wealth, art, science, literature. "Forgetting the 



400 SELF- CUL TURE. 

things behind, reaching out to those before," — this 
is the secret of human progress. Fear of evil may 
keep men from going backward, but only hope of 
something better can carry them on. 

This organ of hope in the brain is balanced by 
another, that of caution. Hope sees the good be- 
fore us ; caution, the dangers to be encountered on 
the way. Both are necessary to progress. A man 
who has too much caution and too little hope is 
easily discouraged. He is so afraid of evil that he 
does not try to get the good. He is the slave of 
anxiety and fear. He will never attempt any diffi- 
cult enterprise. Such men do nothing to carry for- 
ward the world. Better have too much hope, and 
try, and fail, than not to try at all. 
. This, then, is one distinction between the true 
hope and the false one. The hope which deceives, 
is that which promises us future good with no co- 
operation of ours. We think to have the end with- 
out using the means. We trust in luck, in fortune, 
in genius ; not in thought and work. What we 
wish and vaguely expect is to find some pot of gold 
in the ground, to draw the prize in the lottery, to 
be helped by some powerful friend. Those in whom 
this fictitious'and illusive hopefulness is strong, love 
to read fairy stories, and imagine themselves the 
heroes ; are tempted to gamble at cards or in stocks ; 
prefer speculation to legitimate business ; wish to 
be rich at once. All they undertake, they under- 
take blindly, trusting in their good-fortune, refusing 



EDUCATION OF HOPE. 401 

to look at the conditions of success, or the difficul- 
ties in their way. So their life is apt to be one long 
failure. 

The true hope, on the contrary, is one which is 
willing to think, wait, and act. It is in no hurry, 
does not expect instant success. This is what the 
Scripture means by the " patience of hope." True 
hope is very patient. It relies on the working of 
immutable laws, which are sure to bring success at 
last. The man who has this principle in him does 
not read fairy tales, but the biographies of those 
who have done great things. He sees how many 
difficulties they encountered, how many disappoint- 
ments they met, how often they were baffled. He 
sees how they had the "patience of hope;" how 
they tried again and again and again; how they 
learned something by every failure ; and how, at 
last, when success came, they had fairly conquered 
it by honest, careful, thoughtful, persevering work. 

Nothing educates the practical faculty of hope 
more than the knowledge of what men have done 
by patience, wisdom, and determined purpose. We 
look back at the great men of history, — Columbus, 
Socrates, Dante, Washington, Luther, Milton, Paul, 
— and commonly we think only of their success ; 
their whole career seems to us one of steady triumph. 
But study their lives intimately, come close to them, 
and then you see how they fought their way against 
constant opposition, slander, hatred, failure. The 
ideal man whom we call Socrates, the great shining 

26 



402 SELF-CULTURE. 

light whose moral beauty illuminates Paganism, 
whose grandeur of soul has won the praise of the 
earth, — what was his real life ? He lived by hope. 
Men whose names are now forgotten — or would be 
forgotten but for him — lorded it over him, and 
looked on him with supreme and supercilious dis- 
dain. The great Gorgias, the famous rhetorician, 
thought it almost a condescension to argue with him 
and refute him. When the celebrated sophist, Pro- 
tagoras, arrives at Athens, the disciples of Socrates 
all leave him to go to hear this teacher, much greater, 
as they think, than their own master. No one, in 
the days of Socrates, anticipated that this plain- 
spoken, straightforward man, who cannot make an 
oration, or even a speech, who can only talk right 
on, is likely to be remembered. His companions 
and friends admired and loved him, but people gen- 
erally thought him too combative, too plain-spoken. 
No one could tell exactly to what party he belonged : 
he opposed all parties in turn. He had found fault 
with the politicians, the orators, the tragic and comic 
poets, the artisans ; he was by no means popular at 
Athens. His power was this, — that he lived in a 
world of ideas, he believed in great truths, he had 
faith in principles. He was strong in the hope 
which these inspired. Nothing which he saw 
around him could give him courage ; but his hope 
tif the triumph of truth was enough for him. 

We think of Columbus as the great discoverer of 
America ; we do not remember that his actual life 



EDUCATION OF HOPE. 403 

was one of disappointment and failure. Even his 
discovery of America was a disappointment ; he was 
looking for India, and utterly failed of this. He 
made maps and sold them to support his old father. 
Poverty, contumely, indignities of all sorts, met him 
wherever he turned. His expectations were consid- 
ered extravagant, his schemes futile, the theologians 
opposed him with texts out of the Bible, he wasted 
seven years waiting in vain for encouragement at 
the court of Spain. He applied unsuccessfully to 
the governments of Venice, Portugal, Genoa, France, 
England. Practical men said, " It can't be done. 
He is a visionary." Doctors of divinity said, " He 
is a heretic; he contradicts the Bible." Isabella, 
being a woman, and a woman of sentiment, wished 
to help him; but her confessor said no. We all 
know how he was compelled to put down mutiny 
in his crew, and how, after his discovery was made, 
he was rewarded with chains and imprisonment; 
how he died in neglect, poverty, and pain, and only 
was rewarded by a sumptuous funeral. His great 
hope, his profound convictions, were his only sup- 
port and strength. 

Look at the starved features of the melancholy 
Dante, the exile, condemned to be burnt alive on 
false charges of peculation, based on public report. 
Think of the poor wanderer, unconscious of the glory 
that was before him, writing a pathetic letter to his 
beloved Florence, saying, " My people, what have I 
done to you ? " But he, also, clung to his ideas, de- 



404 SELF-CULTURE. 

nounced the temporal power of the popes, put his 
soul into his great poem, lived in the hope of the 
triumph of justice and truth, and so fought his good 
fight. When invited to submit, and confess himself 
in the wrong, and so return to his dear city, he re- 
fused, saying " he would live under the sun and stars 
and see the truth, but not make himself infamous 
even to return to Florence." 

All great men have lived by hope. Not what they 
saw, but what they believed in, made their strength. 
Milton was the object of bitter opposition and sharp 
criticism. He was odious to the Eoyalists, disliked 
by the Presbyterians, abused by the great Salmasius. 
and, in his old age, blind and poor, his friends in 
exile and ruin, fallen on evil days and tongues, he 
had nothing to console him, except his visions of 
eternal beauty, and his lofty hope of doing a great 
work, which the world would not willingly let die. 

Paul, the apostle, whose chance letters have in- 
fluenced the world more than the noble poems of 
Dante and Milton, or the discovery of Columbus, 
was a very unpopular man. He lived by hope ; he 
had nothing else to live by. "We are saved by 
hope," says he ; " but hope that is seen is not hope, 
for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for ? " 
Hope, with him, is one of the principles which en- 
dure through time and eternity. Knowledge passes ; 
opinions change; doctrines and creeds, however 
true, must be revised; but hope remains. 

They say that Paul and Seneca may have met 



EDUCATION OF HOPE. 405 

in Eome. I doubt it. It is hardly possible that 
Seneca could have wished to see Paul. Who was 
Seneca ? The favorite of the Emperor, having a 
splendid palace in Eome, numerous villas and gar- 
dens, twelve millions of dollars in cash, the greatest 
reputation for philosophy, learning, and literary power 
of any man in the city. If Seneca had been asked, 
"Who is Paul ?" he would have said, "A wretched 
Jewish prisoner, disowned by the Jews themselves, 
preaching about another Jew crucified in Syria ; a 
miserable zealot, a fanatic, believing in the resurrec- 
tion of the dead and other like follies." Paul leads 
to-day the thought of mankind, as he has for centu- 
ries ; but, when alive, he was hated by the Jews 
with a deadly hatred. More than forty of them took 
a solemn oath not to eat nor drink till they had 
killed him. He was almost as odious to his fellow- 
Christians in Judea. They said, " Paul is no apostle, 
and cannot be, for he was not a witness to Christ's 
resurrection, and has never even seen him. There 
are only twelve apostles, and Matthias makes the 
twelfth ; therefore Paul is an impostor in claiming 
to be one." His own churches turned against him, 
bewitched by the arguments of his enemies. A man 
of many sorrows and few joys ; obscure, despised, 
longing to depart and be nearer to Christ, — what 
could the great Seneca see at all interesting in 
him ? 

The power which moves the world is hope. An 
anxious, doubtful, timid man can accomplish little. 
Fear unnerves us ; hope inspires us. 



406 SELF-CULTURE. 

Every man must have something to look forward 
to. The condition of human happiness is to hope 
for something better hereafter than we have now. 
Give to Solomon all riches, all knowledge, all power, 
leave him nothing to hope for, and he cries out, "All 
is vanity." But let Paul be obliged to earn his 
bread by making tents ; let him be beaten, ship- 
wrecked, imprisoned two years at Caesarea, one year 
at Eome, opposed by Jews, opposed by Pagans, op- 
posed by Jewish Christians, and let him retain his 
hope of the triumph of Christianity as a universal 
religion, to which every knee shall bow ; let him 
keep his hope in Jesus as the Christ, who shall reign 
till all enemies are subdued under him, — and he is 
so happy that he considers himself to be sitting in 
heaven with Christ even now. 

Two gifts are offered to men in this world ; they 
very seldom can have both. One is success, with 
weariness ; the other failure, with hope. The last 
is much the best. The man who succeeds finds 
that his success does not amount to a great deal ; 
the man who fails, but keeps his hope, is the happy 
man. 

We have had in this State of Massachusetts a 
man who was all his life fighting a good fight for 
ideas and principles. He was always an unpopular 
man with many, especially with the scribes and 
pharisees of politics. The chief priests and elders 
of political parties never liked him. He could not 
compromise, he was not a man of expedients. He 



EDUCATION OF HOPE. 407 

was not a man of majorities ; he was usually on the 
side of the weaker party. But the common people 
believed in him ; the people of Massachusetts and 
of the United States trusted him as an honest 
statesman, a man of principle, one who could always 
be depended on to defend the right. He was very 
odious at the White House, very much disliked by 
the politicians who thought only of the next elec- 
tion. But he lived by hope, by faith in great truths ; 
and now, when that noisy hour has passed by, and 
the great verdict of history is being rendered, the 
name of this Massachusetts statesman is rising to 
take its place with the greatest in our annals. The 
petty wrongs and insults offered to Charles Sumner 
are forgotten ; the light of his honest and truthful 
record illuminates American history. 

Such is the power of hope born out of faith in 
ideas. 

Perhaps it may be said, " It is well for those who 
are naturally hopeful ; but what for us who are not 
so ? How can we, who naturally look on the dark 
side of things, who are easily discouraged, learn to 
be more hopeful ? " 

The organic faculty of hope differs in different 
men. Some have more, others less. But the higher 
kind of hope, the religious hope, born of conviction, 
all men may have. All true religion is hopeful ; be- 
cause the difference between religion and supersti- 
tion is that to the religious man God is goodness, to 
the superstitious man God is terror. True religion 



408 SELF-CULTURE. 

is that which trusts in the goodness of God ; which 
believes good stronger than evil, truth more power- 
ful than error, right sure to conquer wrong. It is 
a kingdom of heaven coming to take the place of 
hell on the earth. It is, indeed, faith, not sight. 
But this faith comes to us in all our best hours. 
When we are in our highest mood, we believe in the 
goodness of God ; in the commanding authority of 
duty; in the immortality of the soul. When we 
are true, brave, strong, generous, pure, we believe in 
God. When we are cowardly, mean, selfish, then 
we believe in the devil. 

If, then, we wish to cultivate and strengthen our 
hope, it must be by increasing our faith in good- 
ness. We must have faith in the true God, and 
that is essentially faith in goodness. Faith in God 
grows as we live in it, and from it. As we believe 
in justice, truth, honor, and act from that belief, our 
faith in God and goodness continually becomes 
stronger. 

The faith of reason gives us confidence in the 
divine laws as the regular method by which truth 
and goodness are to prevail. As the world acquires 
more faith in the supremacy and universality of 
law, it also comes to believe more in progress. Our 
trust in the order of the universe gives the hope of 
great advances and improvements in the material 
and moral order. No matter what difficulties inter- 
vene, we trust that order will emerge out of con- 
fusion, and prevail more and more. 



EDUCATION OF HOPE. 409 

Faith in God as goodness inspires faith in our- 
selves ; and, therefore, hope that we are made for 
something, meant for something, and that by perse- 
verance we can accomplish something. Thus faith 
in Divine Love is the root and the strength of all 
sure hope. 

Jesus was full of this divine hope. In the midst 
of loneliness, opposition, and apparent failure, he 
looked forward to the hour when he should draw 
all men unto him ; when he should judge the earth 
by his truth ; come in his kingdom, and be recog- 
nized as the light of the world and the king of 
truth. His was no illusive hope, fed by his wishes 
alone. He saw all the evil, the wars, the persecu- 
tions, which should precede his triumph. But he 
had no doubt of the result. 

His religion has, therefore, always inspired hope, 
both for this life and the life to come. This hope 
has been a constant motor-power carrying civiliza- 
tion forward ; creating faith in the divine laws ; 
inspiring science, art, and literature. Modern civil- 
ization has been fed at its roots by this perpetual 
hope, born of the Gospel. Christian nations live in 
a perpetual state of expectation, always hoping for 
something new and good ; heathen nations expect 
little, hope for little, and therefore accomplish little. 

The Bible is a book filled with hope from end to 
end, and therein lies much of its power. As, in the 
Book of Genesis, the rainbow of hope floats over the 
retiring waters of the flood ; so the same meteor of 



410 SELF-CULTURE. 

spectral beauty floats on over law and prophets, 
gospels and epistles, and glows most brightly at the 
close in the Book of Eevelation, which shows us a 
new heaven and a new earth. The law looked for- 
ward to the prophets ; the prophets to the days of 
the Messiah ; and those days to his corning as the 
universal king and Saviour. The power of the 
Gospel is its spirit of hope. 

And modern science is also filled with the same 
spirit. It is always looking forward to some new 
discovery of divine law. It predicts progress, it 
announces advance, its theme is continual develop- 
ment. According to science, all things are working 
together for good in the domain of nature ; accord- 
ing to Christianity, all things are working together 
for good in the domain of spirit. 

The path of progress also for each individual soul 
lies along this highway of hope. This is the way of 
salvation. Until we attain this divine hope in the 
supremacy and ultimate triumph of good in the uni- 
verse, we are lost souls, dead souls, — dead while we 
seem to live. "Without hope, there is no spring of 
vital power in the human heart which can carry it 
forward. A man having no faith in providence, 
in the love of God, in human progress, in immor- 
tality, may be, indeed, a conscientious, honest, and 
good man. But his goodness is without enthusiasm, 
with no magnetic power, with no force to create life 
in other souls. It is a discouraging goodness, a 
chilling and unattractive goodness. But with hope 



EDUCATION OF HOPE. 411 

at the centre of the soul all things become alive. 
As the days of spring arouse all nature to a green 
and growing vitality, so when hope enters the soul 
it makes all things new. It insures the progress 
which it predicts. Rooted in faith, growing up 
into love ; these make the three immortal graces of 
the Gospel, whose intertwined arms and concurrent 
voices shed joy and peace over our human life. 



XX. 

EVERY MAN HIS PROPER GIFT. 



XX. 

EVERY MAN HIS PROPER GIFT. 



IT would be a source of great comfort to us if we 
could all be satisfied that each of us has his 
proper gift. We sometimes desire the gifts of others, 
and undervalue our own ; hence envy, rivalry, jeal- 
ousy, and all uncharitableness. It would be very 
good for us if we could only believe the fact, that 
every one has " his proper gift." 

How different are human characteristics ! How 
plain that God loves variety, and abhors uniformity ; 
and how he must dislike that kind of unity which 
a narrow religion and a narrow morality are so apt 
to demand. 

Look at a heap of sand. We cannot say that 
each grain has its proper gift, differing from every 
other. They might change places, and no harm 
come. Those that are at the top might just as well 
be at the bottom, and the heap would remain the 
same. But consider a watch. In a watch the case 
is different. There each wheel, spring, screw, pin, 
has its proper gift from the watchmaker, and neither 



416 SELF-CULTURE. 

can do the work of another. They cannot change 
places. Moreover, the smallest and most insignifi- 
cant part of the watch is essential to the integrity of 
the whole. Omit a single wheel, and the watch 
refuses to move. Take out one screw, and it goes 
badly. 

Each part of the watch is different in form and 
function from the rest, and thus each is adapted to 
work with the rest. But in a heap of sand there 
is neither diversity nor adaptation. The particles 
resemble each other, and therefore cannot cohere 
nor co-operate. The parts of a watch differ from 
each other, and therefore can cohere and can co- 
operate. 

Is human society like the heap of sand, or is it 
like the watch ? In its lowest condition it is like 
the sand ; in its higher, it is like the watch. And 
social progress consists in passing from one of these 
conditions to the other. 

Take a tribe of North American Indians, or a 
tribe of African savages. Each man's function is 
like that of his neighbor. There is no division 
or distribution of labor. Every man is a hunter, 
a fisherman, a fighter, just like every other man. 
Every woman is a cook, a nurse, and a tiller of the 
ground. No one has any proper gift peculiar to 
himself; no special function which others cannot 
perform as well. Therefore the parts of savage 
society do not cohere nor co-operate. 

But consider a great civilized community or a 



EVERY MAN HIS PROPER GIFT 417 

great city. Every man has his own trade, his own 
occupation ; one after this manner, and another after 
that. There are put down in the Boston Directory 
some two thousand different trades carried on in 
this city. The simplicity of savage life has unfolded 
into all this complex and diversified industry. 

This is a watch with two thousand different parts, 
each fitting into the rest. All are necessary to the 
full life and activity of the city. No one can do the 
work of another ; but, by each doing his own work, 
the whole is carried on. Every day each of these 
two thousand industries goes on, and not a man in 
them may know exactly how, or when, or where his 
special work is to be wanted, or how it is to fit into 
the rest. But it will be wanted, and it will fit into 
its place. 

If the industrial world is thus developed into 
variety and combination, into difference and adap- 
tation ; is it not so, too, in the moral, intellectual, 
and spiritual world ? Does culture make men all 
morally and spiritually alike, or does it develop 
differences ? I think it evident that, as men ascend 
in the scale of being, they do not become more 
alike, but more different, more individual, more 
personal. 

Take the great intellects of the race, those who 
have unfolded the most extraordinary power of 
genius. Are Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, alike ? Are 
Homer, Virgil, Dante, Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton, 
repetitions of each other ? Are Fenelon, Channing, 
27 



418 SELF-CULTURE. 

St. Francis, Confucius, Buddha, cast in the same 
mould ? Are Peter, James, John, Paul, fac-similes 
of each other, or of their Master ? No. As men 
unfold and develop, they unfold into originality, 
individuality; each one becoming more and more 
himself, less and less like any one else. ' And by 
becoming himself, by growing up into what he was 
meant to be, he becomes able to contribute some 
important element to human progress. "We do not 
want imitation, — not even an imitation of Christ. 
Having had one Homer, we do not want another ; 
having had one Plato, we do not want another; and 
having had one Christ, we do not want another. 
Christ does not make his apostles feeble imitations 
of himself, but as they grow up into him, they grow 
up into themselves. 

Every man has his own organic gift, his own gift 
of disposition, faculty, ability. 

One man's gift is to tell the truth. He is a great 
truth-teller. He does not know how to say any- 
thing which is insincere, or even equivocal or 
dubious. He comes right out with his thought. 
It is sometimes quite alarming to have such a man 
near you, for his word breaks through the thin ice 
of decorum and propriety on which people are 
walking, and they suddenly get a cold bath in the 
icy waters of truth. Or, to change the figure, his 
word is like lightning, whose keen blue bolt shatters 
the tall trees from top to bottom, and sets the 
houses on fire, but clears up the air and makes it 



EVERY MAN HIS PROPER GIFT. 419 

pure, destroying the seeds of malaria and pestilence. 
One may suffer, but many will be benefited. He 
may be very blunt and rude, but his word is whole- 
some, and does us all good. He was made to do 
this service. Let him not exaggerate his special 
tendencies, but let him use them. 

Another man's organic gift is to be good-natured 
and agreeable ; not to be too truthful ; at all events, 
not to come out with the sharp battle-axe of criti- 
cism and denial on all occasions. As in the garden 
we have vegetables, fruits, and flowers, so in the 
human garden called society we have strong and 
useful persons, men and women of energy and prac- 
tical talent; then kind persons, those who make 
life sweet and dear ; lastly, agreeable persons, who 
make it beautiful by their capacity of imparting 
pleasure by a mere expression, a smile, a gracious 
gesture. Let us be thankful for wholesome vegeta- 
bles, for sweet fruits, for lovely flowers. I do not 
blame my sweet corn and tomatoes because they are 
not strawberries and pears ; I do not quarrel with 
my roses and petunias because they give me noth- 
ing for my breakfast. And so, too, if an agreeable 
person comes to see me, I thank God for that visit. 
If I find a man helpful and wise, I am grateful for 
him; if I meet another who has sympathy and 
kindness, though nothing else, I am glad of that. 

Some persons have the gift of seeing abstract 
truth and absolute right. They see what ought to 
be done. They see the great end, and the circui- 



42 SELF-CUL TURE. 

tous road disappears. They are prophet voices in 
society, terrible critics and censors ; they are for 
laying the axe at the root of the tree. They abhor 
all compromises between good and evil. They can 
make no allowance for temptation, for circumstance, 
for habit. Kadical as John the Baptist, they cry 
aloud in the wilderness of life, and say, "Every 
tree that brings not forth good fruit must be hewn 
down and cast into the fire." Such men are very 
useful. Their fate is hard, and their work severe. 
They are more feared than loved. They are favor- 
ites with no party. They are called impracticables 
by some, fanatics by others. Yet they maintain in 
the world the conviction that right and wrong are 
two things, and not the same ; that truth and false- 
hood are deadly foes, not companions and friends. 
They testify evermore to the eternal nature of moral 
distinctions, to the great gulf fixed between good 
and evil. 

God gives a practical talent to other persons. 
That also is a good gift. They can see at once how 
to remove or avoid difficulties ; they can arrange 
anything that is to be done so that it shall be done 
successfully; they can organize victory in great 
matters or in small. They have no love for ab- 
stractions. They are not for cutting their way 
straight forward through rocks and swamps and the 
tangled wilderness ; they prefer to bend a little, this 
way and that, and so get there sooner. They know 
well, what the poet says, that — 



EVERY MAN HIS PROPER GIFT. 421 

" The road the human being travels, 
That by which blessing comes and goes, doth follow 
The river's course, the valley's peaceful windings 
Curves round the cornfield and the hill of vines, 
Honoring the holy bounds of property, 
And thus secure, though late, reaches its end." 

There is a gift of exceeding serenity with which 
God endows certain souls. Perhaps they never 
say or do anything extraordinary, but an in- 
fluence like that of a calm October day attends 
them. A Sabbath-morning rest tranquillizes all 
hearts when they come. No impatience, no petu- 
lant dissatisfaction, no turbulent doubts, no stormy 
rebellion, can easily resist the holy calm which 
their presence brings. They seem to be so well 
poised and centred themselves ; they certify to us 
such a profound inner harmony ; they are so at one 
with God and with God's world, — that they inspire 
tranquillity. They sing to us a perpetual hymn of 
quiet. 

There is another gift, a gift of sweetness. How, 
in our troubled lives, could we do without those 
fair, summery natures, into which, on their creation- 
day, God allowed nothing sour, acrid, or bitter to 
enter, but made them a perpetual solace and com- 
fort by their sunshine and their cheerfulness ? These 
are the objects of universal love, because their sym- 
pathy is universal ; they are those who cannot be 
provoked ; who think no evil ; whose tone, when 
they find fault with us, is sweeter than that of 



422 SELF-CULTURE. 

most others when they praise us ; who make sun- 
shine in a shady place ; and who are able to med- 
icine to minds diseased, simply by the balm of 
their sympathy. We do not, perhaps, seek them in 
our strong and ambitious hour ; but when life be- 
gins to grow hard with us ; when disappointment, 
bereavement, pain, attack us ; then the soft tone of 
their sympathy, the kind readiness of their friend- 
ship, their brotherly and sisterly pity, are a cheer 
and a blessing. It is a great thing to have this 
sweetness ; that is a proper gift from the Lord. 

Some men are born to be mediators ; they can see 
the truth on both sides ; they can enter into very 
different states of thought, purpose, feeling. They 
introduce us to each other ; they break down the 
middle wall of prejudice between man and man, be- 
tween sects, schools, parties, races, nations, so mak- 
ing peace. 

Others, again, are not thus wide ; not so compre- 
hensive, but narrow; narrow, swift, straight. They 
may be full of prejudices, and be wholly unable to 
do justice to men unlike themselves. But they 
have a work to do. They are like railroad-cars 
which run on a narrow track, and cannot get out of 
it. They will run over everything in their way, but 
they can go far and fast in one direction. 

Hopefulness is a gift. It is a help to us all to 
have some one who is inclined to hope; who has 
faith in good as stronger than evil ; who trusts in 
God, and looks forward to a kingdom of heaven. 



EVERY MAN HIS PROPER GIFT. 423 

Such hope inspires us all with courage ; makes us 
more ready to undertake any work, and encounter 
any danger. 

But others have a gift of cautiousness, and that is 
equally important and valuable. They show the 
difficulties in the way, and so save us from a thou- 
sand errors. They sometimes check us when we 
wish to go forward hastily, or turn us backward 
when we think we might move on ; but this saves 
us from mistakes and long wanderings, which would 
use up strength and heart. 

God gives to one man the gift of writing books, 
speeches, or sermons; and he writes, prints, and 
preaches what may call men to repentance, and 
awaken the sense of responsibility, or the feeling of 
religious trust. But God bestows on another the gift 
of living sermons, and wherever the man goes his 
life preaches. It preaches conscientiousness. He 
is one who would not do another a wrong for any 
gain or success. It preaches generosity. He for- 
gets himself; he delights in helping his neighbor. 
It preaches humility. He is willing to do any 
lowly act of goodness, to bear any burden. He has 
his proper gift, and he uses it properly. Who shall 
say that he has not turned as many to righteous- 
ness as any golden-mouthed Chrysostom of ancient 
or modern days ? 

One man, like Dr. Lardner, or Bishop Butler, or 
Archdeacon Paley, may write books on " The Evi- 
dences of Christianity," or " The Credibility of the 



424 SELF- CUL TURE. 

Gospels," and so convert many sceptics. Another 
may, by his goodness, translate the Gospels into 
daily life, and so make them credible. His good 
life is the best evidence of Christianity. 

Even the sceptic, the doubter, has his proper gift 
from the Lord. Else, why did Jesus choose Thomas 
as one of his apostles ? Hume, Hobbes, Tom Paine, 
Voltaire, all have their use. They came to point 
out the weak places in the popular religion, and thus 
lead us to mend them. Every attack on Christian- 
ity, from the time of Celsus and Porphyry to that of 
Strauss or Frothingham, has strengthened it, brought 
out new defenders, new arguments, and better ones, 
in its behalf. We ought not to be angry with the 
honest critics and doubters, but make use of them. 

That variety which is good in the natural world, 
why should it be bad in the spiritual world ? We 
do not quarrel with an apple because it is not a 
peach, nor with a pine which gives us lumber, be- 
cause it is not mahogany to give us furniture. Why, 
then, should Orthodox and Unitarian, Methodist and 
Quaker, quarrel ? 

What sort of a garden would it be in which there 
was only one kind of flower or one kind of fruit ? 
Eather a monotonous and stupid garden, probably. 
But the church has hitherto seemed to consider it- 
self, not a garden of fruit, but an army of soldiers, 
who are all to be drilled in one way, to be dressed 
in the same uniform, to be just of the same height, 
and carry the same regulation weapons. For the 



EVERY MAN HIS PROPER GIFT. 425 

object, too often, is not to educate men to do good 
and to bear fruit, but to fight with other sects, to 
give battle for creeds, to win victories for the church. 
The man who sings, " Am I a soldier of the cross ? " 
often means, " Am I not a soldier of this or that de- 
nomination ? " 

There is also a gift of insight. I used to notice 
these varieties of gifts with delight in classes for the 
study of history, or of the Bible ; and I have known 
persons often, who, by simply fixing their thoughts 
quietly on a subject, would be sure to have a sight 
of some truth connected with it. Then another 
would have not this, but dialectic power ; power of 
seeing the reason or the unreason of a thing ; power 
of distinguishing between things different, showing 
what was proved and what was not proved by a fact 
or an argument. Another would have judgment, — 
judgment enriched and made clear by knowledge of 
the world and of mankind ; such judgment as would 
seem like a fan in the hand to winnow the chaff 
from the wheat. Another would bring a deep inner 
experience, a whole internal life of struggle, prayer, 
self-devotion, self-surrender, trial borne, duty done, 
temptation resisted, God sought after and found, 
Christ's salvation received and lived. Still another 
would have experience of human wants and how 
they were to be helped ; he would know what men 
suffer and what they desire. Thus, each one contrib- 
uting, according to his own gift, the whole subject 
would be thoroughly studied. So that I have often 



42 6 SELF-CUL TURE. 

felt, while listening to such a conversation, that 1 
could understand the words of Paul, and say that 
to one was given by the spirit the word of wisdom, 
to another knowledge by the same spirit, to another 
faith by the same spirit, to another prophecy, to 
another discerning of spirits, and the like. 

There is nothing which would make us more tol- 
erant of differences, more charitable to those from 
whom our opinions and tastes render us averse, than 
these considerations. These differences are from 
God ; he made us to differ, and he appointed this 
difference for wise ends. I sometimes think that 
the wisest axiom in the world, the saying that goes 
further than any other toward explaining the uni- 
verse, is that popular proverb, " It takes all sorts of 
people to make a world." This proverb expresses 
the wonderful fulness and richness of the world, its 
thousandfold varieties, all working together in one 
grand harmony of adaptations. Attractions and 
repulsions, loves and hates, co-operations and com- 
petitions, rivalry and opposition on the one side, 
partnerships and associations on the other, all result 
at last in an orbed and beautiful whole. If any of 
us had made the world, what a very stupid one it 
would probably have been. Utilitarians would have 
excluded poets and artists, poets would have shut 
out utilitarians. Conservatives would banish re- 
formers, and reformers would exclude conservatives. 
The orthodox dogmatists would have prevented all 
heretics from making their appearance, and vice, 



EVERY MAN HIS PROPER GIFT. 427 

versa. But God lets them all come in, and, in his 
hospitable world, provides room and place for all. 
The poor Bushman, the Hottentot, the wild Austra- 
lian, the idolatrous and heathen multitudes who 
worship Boodh, or who bow to a Fetish, he lets them 
all in ; just as he admits spider and snake, hippopot- 
amus and rhinoceros, tiger and monkey. So in our 
society he gives room for the conceited pedant, the 
foolish fop, the shallow prattler, the buffoon, the 
bully, the blackleg, the border-ruffian, the rep>-di- 
ator, the empty-headed communist, and the political 
wire-puller. It takes them all to make God's world, 
and all have their uses, however we might wish, in 
our haste, to exclude them. " For God hath chosen 
the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, 
and weak things of the world to confound the mighty, 
and base things of the world, and things which are 
despised hath God chosen ; yea, and things which 
are not, to bring to nought the things which are." 

Let us also firmly believe that each of us has his 
gift. Let us not imagine that we are disinherited 
by our heavenly Father, any one of us. Let us be 
ourselves, as God has made us, then we shall be 
something good and useful. 

One star differs from another star in glory, but 
every star contributes to the splendor of the winter's 
night. The man who has one talent must not bury 
it in the earth ; the man who is called at the eleventh 
hour is equal in fidelity, if he works that one hour, 
to those who have labored all the day. 



428 SELF-CULTURE. 

It is a matter of great importance to find what 
our proper gift is. A man who might be extremely 
useful in one situation goes into a place and work 
he has no talent for, and so loses his labor, and his 
life is of no profit. He has mistaken his calling, we 
say. That word " calling " indicates the old relig- 
ious feeling about occupation ; it expresses that we 
should do that work which we are called to do, not 
the work we choose ourselves. Well would it be 
for young men entering life to fall back on this old 
idea. Now, a young man selects the business which 
he thinks will give him the best chance of making 
a fortune, of getting a good position in society, of 
leading an easy and comfortable life. He does not 
ask, " To what business am I called ? For what has 
God given me capacity ? In what can I be the 
most useful to the world and do the most good ? 
What occupation suits my special gift and power ? " 
But not asking such questions, he not only throws 
away usefulness, but happiness with it. 

Let every one be himself, and not try to be some 
one else. God, who looked on the world he had 
made, and said it was all good, made each of us to 
be just what our own gifts and faculties fit us to 
be. Be that and do that, and so be contented. Eev- 
erence, also, each other's gifts ; do not quarrel with 
me because I am not you, and I will do the same. 
God made your brother as well as yourself. He 
made you, perhaps, to be bright ; he made him slow; 
he made you practical; he made him speculative; 



EVERY MAN HIS PROPER GIFT. 429 

he made one strong and another weak, one tough 
and another tender ; but the same good God made 
us all. Let us not torment each other because we 
are not all alike, but believe that God knew best 
what he was doing in making us so different. So 
will the best harmony come out of seeming discords, 
the best affection out of differences, the best life out 
of struggle, and the best work will be done when 
each does his own work, and lets every one else do 
and be what God made him for. 



XXI. 

LET US DO WHAT WE CAN. 



XXI. 

LET US DO WHAT WE CAN. 



THEEE is a story in all the Gospels of a 
woman who put precious ointment on the feet 
of her Master, so that the house was filled with its 
odor. Judas found fault with her, on utilitarian 
grounds. He thought it would have been better 
to have sold the ointment and given the proceeds to 
the poor. So it would, on utilitarian principles. 
According to the rules of political economy, Judas 
was right. Matthew says the other disciples agreed 
with him, and were indignant at " the waste." " Tc 
what purpose is this waste ? " said they. Yes, the 
ointment was wasted, if everything is wasted which 
does not produce a visible, outward result. If noth- 
ing is useful but what can be measured, weighed, 
tabulated, counted, and put into statistical tables, 
then this action was useless. But if that is good 
which feeds the mind and heart, which strengthens 
the soul; if affection is useful, and sentiment is 
useful ; if mau does not live by bread only, but by 
every word which proceeds out of the mouth of 
28 



434 SELF-CULTURE. 

God, the ointment was not wasted, but put to its 
highest possible use. 

In front of a building on Tremont Street, in 
Boston, there stand some statues, carved of granite, 
graceful and pleasing works of art. They cost 
several thousand dollars. The building would have 
answered all its purposes as a Horticultural Hall 
just as well without them. The amount which they 
cost would have provided a comfortable home for a 
number of persons who are now living in cellars 
and exposed to disease. According to the utilitarian 
view of things, then, it was a waste to put the 
statues there. But every poor man in the city is 
a little better, every child who lives in a cellar is a 
little happier, for being in a city in which, besides 
cold brick walls, there is something to please the 
eye and fill the heart. Even the poor street-boy 
who blacks your shoes does not live by bread alone. 
And God, who squanders beauty every day on the 
clouds of morning and evening ; who wastes it in 
tender grasses, mosses, and ferns in the depths of 
inaccessible woods ; on lovely creatures who live in 
the depths of ocean ; he, no doubt, thinks it a good 
thing that we also should do something for the souls 
of a community, no less than for its bodies. 

Why not sell the Public Garden for several 
millions of dollars, and give the money to the poor ? 
You could provide several dinners for every poor 
person in Boston out of the proceeds. But the 
dinners, once eaten, are gone, and those who ate 



LET US DO WHAT WE CAN. 435 

them are no better for it. But now, every poor 
man and woman, after the labor of the day, can get 
a breath of fresh air, scented by fragrant shrubs, in 
the evening twilight ; poor children can go and see 
those beds of tulips, such as the gardens of no 
millionaires can rival. There, in the soft atmosphere 
of night, in sight of the eternal stars, young lovers, 
who have no rooms where they can meet, may walk 
together and sit together, and talk their foolish little 
chat. The poorest man in Boston is ennobled in 
his own esteem, and takes courage when he thinks 
that the Common, and Public Garden, and the 
Public Library belong to him and to his childrerj. 
Is it not a good thing that the poor of Boston should 
have for their use the best park, the best garden, 
and the best library in the State ? 

Jesus, therefore, did not blame Mary, but defended 
her against the blame of Judas. He said, " Let her 
alone. She hath wrought a good work. She hath 
done what she could. She hath come beforehand 
to anoint my body for the burying. Wherever this 
Gospel is preached, this shall be spoken of in her 
praise." 

But suppose, now, that this woman, instead of 
doing "what she could," had stopped to consider 
what might be done, or what ought to be done, or 
what she would like to do. Suppose she had said, 
" What good will it do for me to go and carry my 
ointment ? It will seem presumptuous, silly, ridic- 
ulous. They will laugh at me, perhaps blame me 



436 SELF-CULTURE. 

I should like to do some great thing for the Master. 
I wish I could induce the Pharisees and Scribes to 
accept him as the Christ. That would be worth 
while, for they have influence. But it would be of 
no use for me to go to him. Nobody cares for me." 
If she had reasoned thus, and acted accordingly, 
she would have reasoned and acted as you and I 
are continually reasoning and acting; but, then, she 
would not have received the censure of Judas, nor 
the praise of Jesus ; nor would the Scripture this 
day be fulfilled in our ears, that wherever the Gospel 
is preached this is spoken of in her honor. 

" She hath done what she could." This is the 
essential thing. We are not bound to do great 
things, but only to do what we can. When con- 
science tells us that something ought to be done, 
when our heart prompts us to do anything, then 
let us go and do it. Let us not fritter away the 
impulse, and freeze the motive by asking, What 
good will it do ? Some things are good in them- 
selves. Some things are an end in themselves. 
They are their own excuse for being. And such 
are all acts of conscience, religion, love, faith, which 
we are led to do, not from selfish considerations, but 
from a generous impulse of the soul. 

What a change would take place in all our lives 
if we only made up our minds to do what we can 
every day; having faith that, if we do anything 
right, however small, God will help us to do more. 
We do nothing because we cannot do everything. 



LET US DO WHAT WE CAN. 437 

We do not begin to do a good thing because it is 
not already done. We do not take the first step 
because we have not already reached the goal. 
Sometimes indolence prevents us from doing what 
we can. In all revolving machinery there is one 
point where the motor force does not operate. To 
get over that point of inertia is the difficulty. So 
with us ; frequently all motives fail to move us to 
begin to do the right action. If we get over that 
point of inertia, all goes well enough. 

Then, again, selfishness often keeps us from 
doing what we can. We are afraid that if we do 
anything, we may have to do more. We are not 
happy while we live only for ourselves, but then 
we cannot make up our minds to live for others. 
So we wear life away, and accomplish nothing for 
others or ourselves, because we cannot, just for 
once, forget ourselves entirely in some generous 
action, some great cause not our own, some convic- 
tion of duty. I see many people to whom God has 
given all means, all opportunities, who could every 
day be a blessing to some one with hardly any 
more effort than is required to put out their hand ; 
who, instead, have built themselves into a sort of 
fortress ; have intrenched themselves with all pos- 
sible defences against any chance of coming into 
contact with those whom they could aid. I pity 
them ; they do not know what they are losing. 

Sometimes, also, conscience keeps us from doing 
what we can. There is so much that we ought to 



438 SELF-CULTUkE. 

do, such a burden of responsibility on our conscience, 
that we are paralyzed by it. We are discouraged 
by the amount of obligation. We are also dis- 
couraged by the amount of our past neglect. We 
have left undone so much that we ought to have 
done, that it seems hopeless to try now to do any- 
thing. We are like a man who has gone so deeply 
in debt that he sees no chance of ever paying the 
whole, and so he does not try to pay anything. 

The imagination sometimes prevents us from 
doing what we can. The ideal so far surpasses the 
possible that we are discouraged. Everything we 
do looks so mean by the side of our idea of what 
might be done. With the summit in our eye, we 
walk on the plain, and do not attempt to climb. 

Moreover, a false theology sometimes, by its exor- 
bitant demands, prevents us from doing what we 
can. It tells us that our best works are sinful; 
that all common goodness is only filthy rags in the 
sight of God ; that unless we are in the true church, 
and hold k the right creed, and have gone through 
the right experience, all our virtue is good for noth- 
ing. This is discouraging ; and, just so far as it is 
believed, it prevents people from doing what they 
can. It tells them they can do nothing till God 
comes and gives them a new heart. It teaches 
" inability " to such an extent that people regard it 
as a religious act to do nothing. They say they 
honor God by ceasing from their own works. 

But, now, the peculiar and essential doctrine of 



LET US DO WHAT WE CAN. 439 

Christianity — the gospel in the gospel — lies just 
here ; that God promises to help us to do all so 
soon as we are willing to do something ; that he for- 
gives us our debt as soon as we are ready to forgive 
our debtors ; that we may leave the past to him and 
the future to him, if we will only do now whatever 
our hand finds to do. Christ comes as a present 
Saviour to give us our daily bread, to help us now, 
and to make now the day of salvation. Saving 
faith is being willing to trust our salvation to God, 
and not to be anxious about it at all, just as a child is 
not troubled about to-morrow's dinner, or its win- 
ter's clothes, but leaves all that to its father and 
mother. 

Those who try to believe too much often end by 
believing too little. Those who try to feel too much 
at last freeze their hearts, and cannot feel at all. 
Never try to believe more than you can. If you 
can only believe a little, but believe that honestly, 
it will either lead to more, or else it may do you as 
much good as more belief. God, who has chosen 
the foolish things of this world to confound the 
wise, and feeble things to confound the mighty, and 
things which are not to bring to nought those which 
are, sometimes chooses atheists and infidels to con- 
found by their goodness the most orthodox believers. 
I do not believe in holding up gamblers like John 
Morrissey to public admiration because he did not 
take bribes in Congress ; but even he may rise up 
in the day of judgment, with the people of Sodom 



440 SELF-CULTURE. 

and Gomorrah, to condemn the professors of relig- 
ion who, while teaching Bible-classes on Sunday, 
are robbing the corporations of which they are 
treasurers during all the rest of the week. 

It is time that a little more stress was laid on 
simple honesty. It is not every man who can be a 
great saint, or a mighty preacher, or a founder of hos- 
pitals ; but every man can be faithful in his work. 
If he is a mechanic, he can do his work well, and 
not put sham work in the place of true. If he is 
the president or director of a bank or of a manufac- 
turing corporation, he can do his duty by thor- 
oughly examining the affairs of the institution, by 
not allowing the cashier or treasurer to run away 
with the funds, and then being astonished and say- 
ing he did not know anything about it. The Apos- 
tle John could find no better thing to say to his old 
friend than this : " Brother, thou art faithful in all 
that thou doest." But we are more advanced, and 
want "smart" men, not faithful men; and when 
the smart men run away with our property we won- 
der why it was so. Possibly, if " they did not know 
everything down in Judee," they did know some 
things of which we might make use. 

If we wish to be useful, the only way is to do 
what we can. Do not seek for a great thing, 
and do not be afraid of a great thing if it comes. 
If you see that something ought to be done, 
then probably you are the person to do it. If you 
are, you will be enabled to do it. The greatest 



LET US DO WHAT WE CAN. 441 

deeds have not been done by the greatest people, 
but by the most faithful people ; by those who are 
not in a hurry to find the great thing, and, on the 
other hand, not afraid of it when it is sent to them. 
We learn thus how God's strength is made perfect 
in our weakness. We take one step, and it leads to 
another. Luther did not commence the Eeforma- 
tion with any deliberate purpose of doing such a 
work. He simply did what he could to put a stop 
to the practical evils resulting from the sale of in- 
dulgences ; and so he was led on till he found him- 
self contending, single-handed, against the whole 
church. Then he was obliged to say : " Here I 
stand ! I cannot do otherwise. God help me ! " 
And then the whole Eeformation followed. 

We, who have not to reform the universal church, 
but only to reform ourselves and to reform the little 
circle around us, may have a work to do just as im- 
portant in the sight of God as that of Luther. Who 
knows what great influences may go out of the 
small sphere in which you and I are placed ? Who 
knows what may be done by that child over whom 
your life sheds light or darkness, according to your 
fidelity ? As the great Amazon or Mississippi, 
which flows through half a continent, comes from 
the blending influences of sun and shower, of dew 
and snow-storm ; comes from affluents fed in many 
a quiet valley, — so the great river of God, the king- 
dom of truth and love, comes from the co-operation 
of thousands of hearts and lives, which are ignoran*" 



442 SELF-CULTURE. 

of each other now, but which are working togethei 
unconsciously. They shall see each other hereafter 
in the judgment, and recognize each other as fellow- 
laborers in the great cause of the Gospel. 

Suppose that we wish to be loved by our friends. 
That is right. We all need to be loved in order to 
be happy. The man who has no friends may have 
everything else, but he must be an unhappy person. 
The whole secret here, also, is in doing what you 
can for your friends. You cannot get affection by 
looking for it or seeking it. It must come of its 
own accord, if at all. It comes from little things, 
not great ones. We communicate happiness to 
others, not often by great acts of devotion and self- 
sacrifice, but by the absence of fault-finding and 
censure, by being ready to sympathize with their 
notions and feelings, instead of forcing them to sym- 
pathize with ours. If we are captious and queru- 
lous, if we complain of this and find fault with that, 
we may be right in our judgments, but we repel 
sympathy. It is so much better, and so easy, to 
look at the good side of things first, and, if we must 
find fault, do so afterward. We cannot, to be sure, 
make ourselves attractive and amiable by an effort. 
But this is something we can do. We can think 
and speak of what is pleasant rather than of what 
is disagreeable ; of sunshine more than storm • we 
can, in little things, try to make others happy. 

Or, suppose we wish for improvement. That is a 
right thing to desire. Progress is essential to peace. 



LET US DO WHAT WE CAN. 443 

To go round and round in a circle without going for- 
ward is tedious. The reason why so many people 
are not happy, who have all the means of happiness, 
is that everything seems just the same to-day that 
it was yesterday. Life grows very tiresome where 
there is no progress. But there are only two kinds 
of progress, — one outward, the other inward. We 
can make progress by getting more and more of 
outward things, or by becoming more inwardly. As 
long as we can keep getting on in the world, getting 
up higher in society, growing richer, becoming more 
famous, there is a certain sort of satisfaction about 
it. But this does not last. The only real satisfac- 
tion there is, is to be growing up inwardly all the 
time, becoming more just, true, generous, simple, 
manly, womanly, kind, active. And this we can all 
do, not by an effort, not by a struggle, but by doing 
each day the day's work as well as we can. A man 
grows good and strong and wise, just as an elm-tree 
grows large, stately, and graceful ; grows more and 
more luxuriant with its thousand swinging branches 
and myriad flickering leaves. It is by being true 
to himself and to his work, standing where he is, 
and being faithful in the least thing that comes. 
Then he grows, day by day, and we have the joy of 
seeing a generous, pure youth pass into an active, 
useful manhood, active manhood mature into the 
sweet and tender wisdom of age. Men and women, 
standing in their place, doing their work, trusting 
in God's love and help, grow deeper, soar higher, 



444 SELF-CULTURE. 

spread more widely as the years pass. They do 
not, perhaps, pass for saints, for they do no extraor- 
dinary things. They do not retire into convents to 
pass days in prayer. But every one learns to honor 
and love them increasingly; men come to lean 
on their strength, take counsel of their experience ; 
they spread light and peace around them, day by 
day, and so cause the kingdom of God to come 
more and more, simply by doing what they can. 

Whenever we do what we can, we immediately 
can do more. When men are ascending a moun- 
tain, each step, so insignificant in itself, carries them 
on and up, till new scenes open before them. They 
have only to keep walking on, taking one step at a 
time, and presently they find themselves rising 
above the region of forests, begin to get glimpses of 
blue lakes lying below them, of sister peaks rising 
above them, of the great snow-covered fields which 
soar upward, pure and cold, into the glittering air ; 
they see the distant ocean, spotted with white sails, 
the forest rolling its sea of verdure far away up to 
the pale horizon. So, as we keep doing what we 
can, steadily, constantly, life opens before us, heaven 
opens above us, the world comes around us, rich, 
varied, beautiful, and we find ourselves on great 
eminences of thought and love, hardly knowing how 
we came there, for we have been only doing what 
we could all the time, — no more, no less. 

Half the good .that is done comes from being 
thoughtful, considerate, and accommodating. Some 



LET US DO WHAT WE CAN. 445 

people are always so. In almost every village or 
town you find some one person who is always ready 
to think for others, to consider what others feel, and 
to accommodate his wishes and acts to their needs. 
Perhaps it is a good old lady, one who has long since 
risen above the prejudice of sect, party, caste in so- 
ciety, and amuses herself every day by helping those 
forlorn people whom we call " inefficient," in study- 
ing the difficulties of stupid people who do not know 
how to help themselves, in entering into the immense 
affairs of little boys and girls. She is the help and 
reliance of old and young, good and bad, saint and 
sinner. 

One of the best things in the Gospel of Jesus is 
the stress it lays on small things. It ascribes more 
value to quality than to quantity; it teaches that 
God does not ask how much we do, but how we do 
it. The generous widow who put her two coppers 
into the treasury gave more than all the rest. The 
Publican who prayed the shortest prayer on record, 
a prayer in seven words, went down to his house 
justified more than those who had recited long lit- 
urgies. Thus the Gospel rebukes the indolence 
which will not begin to work, the selfishness which 
lives only for itself, the timidity which is afraid of 
God, the scruples of conscience which avoid respon- 
sibility. It says to all, Begin now, at once, to do 
what you can for God, for man, for truth, for right. 
Begin, and he will take the responsibility for the 
result. Begin, and do what you can, not thinking 



446 SELF-CULTURE. 

of the past or the future, but only of that now, which 
is always the day of salvation. Your past sins shall 
be forgiven if you begin now to do right, for that is 
repentance. Your future salvation you may trust to 
God, while you are doing what you ought now. This 
trust, which throws off all anxiety about past sin 
and future salvation, while it does what it can now, 
leaning on God's help, — this is the faith which 
saves the soul, which casts out all fear, which fills 
the heart with peace, which takes the sting from 
death, and surrounds us with the summer atmos- 
phere of hope and love. 



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EUctrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton 6* Co. 
Cambridge, Mass., U.S. A. 



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